Favorite Batch MP3 encoder?

Yes, I realize that's an oxymoron. Does anyone have recommendations for Batch MP3 converters? I work for a company that produces museum audio tours. Depending on the length of the content, we usually encode at 48kbs. The content is usually speech, often with music. I've tried Peak's encoder(lamelib), iTunes 3, and MP3 Pro (a windows app). iTunes was quite good for music at lower rates, but created a lot of artifacts when encoding speech. I assume the algorhythm was optimised for music. Peak was most convenient, as we also use a basic EQ setting when batch converting. Alas, lame was, well, LAME. The artifacts were completely unacceptable. MP3 Pro won for quality, but we'd rather be using a mac-based program. So, any suggestions for a Mac-based MP3 batch processor that works well with speech at low kbs rates? Thanks much, PS

For PC try Sonic foundry's Batch Convertor. Does not run well on NT fine on 2000 or XP pro

I second the Barbabatch. You also might want to adjust your batch eq settings to find any offensive frequencies that are messing with the mp3 compression. Occasionally a certain frequency will mess with a certain encoder. I usually run a series of tests with different eq settings to find the best "sound" for the particular encoder. -fb

you might try BarbaBatch from Audio Ease.

Yeah, BarbaBatch is cool as hell. But give Discreet's Cleaner 6 a try as well. Fast and does more than just Audio. The video stuff in cleaner is great. Also, the old SoundJam has a nice batch converter as well. Did you get iTunes to batch convert from files? I can only figure out how to do 1 file at a time without a CD in there. I must be missing something basic.

SPARK by TC is really good...

For speech-files the best results I obtained were: - 1 batch convert the audio-files to 22.050 kHz AIF using Barbabatch, - 2 drop-batch-convert to 48mbps using Mpegger. (you could even try 16.000 kHz @ 32mbps) The optional Frauenhofer MP3 codec used in Babrbabatch sounds very bad at low bitrates, so that's why I use Mpegger. Don't use the wave format, since Mpegger can't convert .wav files to MP3 files! Huby