Don Pearce wrote in message news:4993d29d.580677562@localhost...
On Wed, 11 Feb 2009 09:18:20 +0000 (GMT), Jim Lesurf

Have you tried any of the AAC streams yet? They seem to survive even
very low bit rates. In particular I find the image is far steadier
than medium rate MP3.

AAC is far newer technology, and was designed for equal quality at half the
bitrate. I don't know that it is quite that good, but there are technical
reasons for it to be better, all other things being equal.