>Some people swear by VBR, I don't. Sure the files are a bit
?smaller but I don't believe they sound any better and
?the space that is gained with encoding them VBR
?isn't that much of an issue nowadays

That would depend on the encoder. My own VBR files are often larger than their CBR companions (same track). This puzzled me for a while, until I wrote "mp3tool" to look more closely.. a typical 128kbps VBR often comes out at around 142kbps average in real life, at least with the encoder I use (not the best, but good enough).

VBR should outperform CBR in virtually every case, except perhaps for just plain speech, or maybe at really high bitrates where the StrongArm might be more loaded doing the decoding (unlikely).

Cheers

-ml