Originally Posted by Cornucopia View Post
@pandy, at that high bitrate, they OUGHT to all 3 (MP1, MP2 & MP3) be sonically transparent (aka indistinguishable from uncompressed/LPCM to the great majority of listeners). More on that soon...
BTW, MP2 is also a DCT-type codec. And Musepak isn't the only extant realization of it, there is still TooLame (or its variant, TwoLame).

AFAIK mp2 is not DCT based (FFT is used to estimate energy) https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/101027-MP2-vs-MP3?goto=newpost

As a principle mp3 code information in a different domain than mp2.
Musepak is not one of mp2 implementation, it use similar methods, can be seen as natural evolution of mp2 but it is not compatible with mp2.
And yes, twolame seem to be latest and most advanced available freely mp2 encoder implementation.

I would say that lack of audible smearing in mp2 is even when mp3 bitrate is comparable to mp2 (reasonable high for mp2 perceived quality) and this is by definition how MDCT works (even with window overlapping) - famous example of such sound are all impulse audio sources (percussion alike) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-echo , of course you can select different size of MDCT but it will affect different areas.