Here are the samples I reference in my thread in the Listening Tests section [“dBpower LAME 320 CBR - "fast" encode fewer artifacts - why? (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=91953)”]. Again, I'm hearing fewer artifacts in the opening seconds of "Show Me Your Spine" when I used dBpoweramp's "Fast (Low Quality)" LAME setting than when using the "Slow (High Quality)" setting, and I'm just wondering why that would be.
I'm not quite sure what quality setting dBpoweramp uses for "Slow (High Quality)," but I think it's q2 or q1 -- I don't think they use Q0 at all. (I tried encoding using Q0 with foobar2000, but oh, boy, that's a whole other story... ALL the samples sounded worse when encoded using foobar2000, both using LAME 3.98, and I have no idea why.)
Apparently too late to edit the above post, but I meant to say that the Foobar "Show Me Your Spine" samples sounded WORSE than the dBpoweramp encodes. Not sure why that is -- both use LAME 3.98, but the Foobar encodes actually sounded worse than even the "Fast (High Quality)" setting on dBpoweramp.