The Mars Volta – The Widow The Mars Volta – L’Via L’Viaquez 20 years of Frances the Mute. In December 2004, a full copy of Frances the Mute was leaked to the Internet from the vinyl version. The rip was of poor quality. Encoded as a 96 kbit/s MP3, other versions were reencoded to 192 kbit/s WMA from the source mp3, resulting in even worse audio quality. Gold Standard Lab…