I'm on holiday and away from the studio so can't hear these and haven't got time to read, but it sounds like you may have some sort of phase problem. There's an easy way to check this - record your tune into the computer and save it as a mono file. Then convert it to MP3 and see if the artifacts have gone away.

If that's where the bugger lies, then I can advise you further when I get back!

Cool, i'll check that one out! Thanks everyone

(sorry for the bump)

Speaking from a similar experience and numerous listening/analysis tests, newer versions of LAME simply aren't as good when it comes to CBR encoding. This is because developers consider VBR encoding to be a superior method (same quality, smaller filesize). If you need to use CBR encoding, I highly recommend YAMP 1.3.

That said, I agree that 128 will never result in very good quality (unless you're encoding a mono file, which requires less data).

yeah it's irritating

i'm curious as to exactly how much chipmusic ends up with this problem, i need to listen to more new stuff

Interesting, I actually have that noise on some of my compressed tracks too (http://soundcloud.com/joshua_satterfiel … -stir-your). I would say just cry and/or use bandcamp.
edit: nevermind, great work ub

i was wrong, it actually says 128 is the bare minimum derp

Last.fm also normalizes them so there aren't any wild jumps in volume from one track to another during radio play. In my experience, this sometimes severely distorts low freqs.

soundcloud and bandcamp encode their mp3's from the lossless format you upload i believe. last.fm is weird in that it insists you upload 128kbps mp3's.

wait, but

if the issue is a site making it 128kbps for streaming anyways, won't it just make a 128kbps mp3 of a 128kbps mp3? do they have it set up to not re-encode a 128kbps mp3?

crazy, so the effect occurs with any sort of low frequency square waves i gather?

Ah! retarded.

I believe he stated previously that sites he's using, like Bandcamp stream at 128kbps, regardless of the file's original bit rate. Other sites like Last.fm do this as well and it can be frustrating. It also doesn't help that they're essentially converting from one mp3 to another (at least with Last.fm.)

I still don't understand why you would encode something at 128 ?!!!!!!!

Tested some encoders @ 128 kbps CBR 44kHz

The raw wave, perfect square:

LAME 3.98, surprisingly the worst of the bunch:

Fraunhofer FastEncc 1.02, not much better. I think iTunes uses this:

BladeEnc 0.94.2 was the best at this bitrate. Also surprising, considering it's bad rep and age:

As you can hear, the effect appears mostly with low to mid frequencies. Maybe I'll test a little with VBR setting later, just out of curiosity.

Didn't test XING because I couldn't find a stand-alone encoder and didn't want to bother to install some crap.

I'll try to encode with Fraunhofer later. Maybe a different algorithm may help.