Drew MacDonald wrote:
>Michael Coxe wondered:
>> What's the minimum BR? 128K is not sellable quality. If the minimim is
>> 96K (or god fobid lower) I still won't join eMusic.
>
>Oh, hell no, they were never at 96; otherwise I never would have joined.
>But I am very pleased by eMusic's new VBR encoding. They claim it averages
>out to 192, and that seems about right. 
>They encode with LAME version 3.92 ... at alt preset standard.

OK, that's great. I never meant 96K fixed. Usually with VBR there's a 
minimum bit rate, but I know exactly about LAME's "alt preset standard"
(tho I use extreme, the quality/size tradeoff is minimal). Makes sense
they're using LAME - probably under Unix/Linux with some powerful
scripting tools and pulling from a database. Finally something I can
get behind and support.

Hat's off to eMusic!

 - michael