Any good (free) VBR codecs?

[manveruppd]

As title. I normally encode using CDEx at a constant bitrate of 192kbps with the Lame mp3 codec, but I thought I'd try a VBR format to save some space so I can fit more stuff on my phone's SD card. Tried encoding some orchestral music using Windows Media Player's vbr wma codec and it's dire. Well, actually it's passable for 80% of each track's length, but the bitrate seems to drop very suddenly and very audibly at very strange places - I thought the idea of vbr was to use lower bitrates during passages where nothing much is going on audibly, but WMP seems to do it whenever it likes to and it spoils the music.

So, are there any intelligent vbr codecs about or is such a thing a utopian dream?

 

[manveruppd]

Thanks, I'll give EAC a try!

Another question: is there any way I can take an entire folder of 192kbps mp3 files and convert them all at once to 96kbps? I use Nero to do them one by one but I'm too lazy, I'd rather have something that can do them all together, copy them to a separate folder to leave the original files untouched, AND chew my food for me!