Ian Molton wrote in message ...

What an appaling test. the bitrates are way off (at least the guy documents that)
if you look st the results knowing that, it shows the test up as useless.

The fact is that these codecs do achieve a average bitrate of 128 Kbps
when used to encode full albums. The actual bitrate used just for
these small test samples is not representative of realistic usage when
encoding full albums. That's the nature of VBR encoding. Please read
the presentation of the test (the first link at the page), this is
explained at there.

This issue was thoroughly discussed at the Hydrogenaudio forums before
the test was launched, and it was agreed that the final procedure used
was the most realistic way of calculating bitrates.