I just happened to be looking up some open source software for someone and happened on the Play Ogg initiative ( http://www.fsf.org/resources/formats/playogg ). My curiosity got the better of me so I did a little more digging on the Ogg Vorbis (open, free and unencumbered equivalent of mp3) format and happened upon this low bit rate comparison of various encoders:
http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/listen.html
I was very surprised to note the obvious audible differences between each encoder and even more surprised to hear how superior the Ogg Vorbis encoder sounded at these low bit rates. It's wonderful to see an open standard encoder that sounds superior to all the commercial and encumbered encoders! I'm so impressed I'm seriously contemplating putting the encoder and decoder into Har-Bal!
If you have a chance, please take a listen. If you are as impressed as I was then you'll probably be seriously re-considering using any other lossy compression format ever again.
Cheers,
Paavo.