>Generally Transparent = MP3 LAME @ ~ 128kbps. That is the good old standard.
Says who? And which version of LAME? That encoder has seen huge improvements over the years. We should not define audio transparency by an outdated and flawed format. We should define audio transparency by whether it is distinguishable from a lossless source or not.
But yes, a modern version of lame (3.98 or newer) will be transparent around V5 VBR, which is ~130kbps. BUT -- and this is a huge twerking 'but' -- the MP3 format suffers from pre-echo. There is nothing you can do about it. It is lessened at higher bitrates, but you can never completely get rid of it. There is also the problem of the SFB21 defect, which can severely bloat the allocated bitrate on content that is heavy in high frequencies: http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=LAME_Y_switch
Newer formats such as AAC, Vorbis and Opus do not share these limitations. I don't know where you read that AAC is worse than MP3, because that is simply objectively false, as shown by every listening test you can care to dig up. Did you mistakenly use FAAC (probably the worst AAC encoder out there) or something?
Says who? And which version of LAME? That encoder has seen huge improvements over the years. We should not define audio transparency by an outdated and flawed format. We should define audio transparency by whether it is distinguishable from a lossless source or not.
But yes, a modern version of lame (3.98 or newer) will be transparent around V5 VBR, which is ~130kbps. BUT -- and this is a huge twerking 'but' -- the MP3 format suffers from pre-echo. There is nothing you can do about it. It is lessened at higher bitrates, but you can never completely get rid of it. There is also the problem of the SFB21 defect, which can severely bloat the allocated bitrate on content that is heavy in high frequencies: http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=LAME_Y_switch
Newer formats such as AAC, Vorbis and Opus do not share these limitations. I don't know where you read that AAC is worse than MP3, because that is simply objectively false, as shown by every listening test you can care to dig up. Did you mistakenly use FAAC (probably the worst AAC encoder out there) or something?