It's been proven to be terrible for encoding as it just chops off all high frequencies.


Ummm... proven by whom?

I may be mistaken, but I was under the impression that this was an urban legend, spread by people who didn't set the proper parameters when encoding. (See the .jpg file attached to this post.)

Admittedly I am a big fish in a small pond here in Alaska, not a lot of basis for comparison, but the great majority of people who have heard music played in my car (all encoded with the Xing encoder in Audio Catalyst) have said unreservedly it was the best they had ever heard. In particular, about 80% of them, with no prompting from me, use the word "clear" or "clean" within the first 40-60 seconds of listening. This would suggest that my high frequencies are coming through intact.

It's possible I may be suffereing from delusions of grandeur about the quality of my stereo, and if there is credible information demonstrating poor sound quality from AudioCatalyst/Xing when properly configured, I would seriously consider re-encoding my music. (I would not re-encode to get rid of the occasional artifact, but a sweeping improvement in frequency response and overall sound presence might be persuasive.)

tanstaafl.