If you're interested, check out the listening tests section at https://hydrogenaud.io where experienced testers contribute results to devs trying to improve various lossy codecs.
It often depends on the source material -- some sounds are harder for some algorithms to encode, leading to increased bitrate if the codec supports VBR, or perhaps artifacts of not, or if there's insufficient bitstream available.
Unsurprisingly the newer codecs usually manage to sound better than MP3 at significantly lower bitrates. Remember the only point in lossy encoding is to save space / bandwidth -- it's literaly why MP3 et al were invented.
It often depends on the source material -- some sounds are harder for some algorithms to encode, leading to increased bitrate if the codec supports VBR, or perhaps artifacts of not, or if there's insufficient bitstream available.
Unsurprisingly the newer codecs usually manage to sound better than MP3 at significantly lower bitrates. Remember the only point in lossy encoding is to save space / bandwidth -- it's literaly why MP3 et al were invented.