I recently encoded some tracks in the MP4 (AAC) format. This is the format that audio is encoded on DVDs. What I observed was that an MP4 clip encoded at stereo 32Kbps VBR sounds as good as a 128 or 160 Kbps stereo MP3 file.
If we are satisfied about MP4, we can start using that instead of MP3 since it will save us lot of upload/download time due to smaller files, with no compromise on quality.
Try this sample MP4 and say whether it is good or not. It is encoded at about 23Kbps (as against normal MP3s which are encoded at 128Kbps).
http://rapidshare.de/files/24925021/Gur ... 4.mp4.html
If you dont have an MP4 player on your PC, here is a free player which plays all audio and video formats:
http://ftp.freenet.de/pub/filepilot/win ... alt149.exe