Since people wondered here is a quick demonstration of speex.

Here is an MP3 recorded at 96kbsec it’s 768KB in size, as a raw wav file:
http://www.lowbandwidthnoagenda.info/demo/test-mp3.wav

Here it is in speex, at 54kb in size
http://www.lowbandwidthnoagenda.info/demo/test-wide.wav

And again in speex at 29kb in size
http://www.lowbandwidthnoagenda.info/demo/test-narrow.wav

So while the ‘narrow’ file sounds ‘bad’ you can understand them, the ‘wide’ version sounds pretty good, and being a fraction of the size is a ‘good thing’ IMHO.