Studying this further with SN we ended up with larger "SOFT AUDIO" support after realizing that the glitch
free mp2 clips require "SOFT AUDIO". So in this version

- SOFT AUDIO (=WAV8/WAV10 sampling rate) can be used as the default if you define PLUGIN > SOFT_AUDIO=Y
- CLIPPER supports also SOFT AUDIO (and the mp3 clips are << really small >> because the mp3 bit rate used is 24 kbps!
- The BOTTOM WINDOW > AUDIO supports also SOFT AUDIO

I'm fully aware that some users always think that "bigger is better" (also related to the audio sampling rate) but sometimes the benefits of WAV8/WAV10 are clear: the audio quality in most cases is as good as with the max sampling rate (at least "acceptable"), the mp3 clips are (almost) glitch-free and your mp3 files are extremely small (in fact the optimal bit rate for WAV8 mono would be 56/4 = 14 kbps, but the smallest bit rate supported by the lame encoder is 24 kbps (and no, you can't get better audio quality/resolution if you use a higher bit rate in this case, because the original audio sampling rate always determines the final quality:
If you increase the bit rate for mono WAV8, it is just a waste of disk space).

The glitches have appeared if you have very short overflow peaks in audio (from electric fences/electric devices/etc), they are audible also in the wav playback (and visible on the WAV applet), but when compressed to mp3 they can become very annoying in the final mp3 audio. They are also audible/visible when SOFT AUDIO is used, but much less "aggressive" (remember: that overflow audio peak is very short, only a few samples and if WAV32 is decreased to WAV8, also the duration of the peak is decreased to 1/4 and also everything above 4kHz in audio is wiped away thus making the audio "smoother".

An alternative way to soften those peaks is to use/tune CR (some peaks can be fully eliminated) or even use the CLIPPER's sample editor (you can zoom the clip data down to the sample level and cut the "bad samples" totally away).
However if you have those kind of audio spikes in your recordings, SOFT AUDIO is an easy and handy
default way to take care of those audio overflow peaks.

Small question: Can I somehow recognise which mode is currently active apart from by pressing ALT-W again?
Nope - originally this was meant to be an "undocumented private customization" for SN and he wants to keep SOFT AUDIO always on. If this gains wider interest and folks really start to toggle it on/off every now and then, maybe such an info is needed to be displayed somewhere.