[isw]

In article
,
ChrisCoaster wrote:

As indicated by iTunes, an increasing proportion of mp3s are being
encoded in "joint" stereo. Does it actually "save storage" and
"improve performance" as it is touted to?

IIRC, it's a "sum and difference" process (L+R, L-R), which results in a
lower bitrate for the same quality as compared to encoding the two
channels individually -- the L+R channel is just as easy/difficult to
encode as either L or R alone, while the L-R channel contains a whole
lot less information *in most cases* and so takes a smaller bitrate to
encode. If well done, there's no reason why there should be a reduction
in quality; no information is lost by that process.

Isaac