Podcast sounds terrible when I export it as an MP3.

[NeoJobe]

I've been using Audacity for a month now, so please forgive me since this is likely user error.

I am using the 1.3.7 beta and exporting my podcast as an mp3. I did this last week and the podcast sounded just like it did while editing. However, this week it sounds artifact and echoy. I don't know what is going on and I have tried several things, including:

Messing with the settings.
reinstalling audacity
downloading a different lame
and othe things.

Can anyone give me some pointers?

I have been forced to export as a .m4a. And it sounds crystal clear. Help?

[steve]

Whenever possible, work with uncompressed audio (WAV). MP3 compression is "lossy" and always causes some degree of sound quality loss. If you open an MP3 in Audacity, edit it and export it as an MP3, then you have quality loss times 2. The loss is cumulative and gets worse every time you decode/re-encode. Data compression should be the last step in a production.

Use the official Lame version from the main Audacity web site.

When you Export, select "MP3", then click on "Options" - check that the compression amount is not set to a low quality - the presets provide optimum settings for various compression amounts.