Mpc Quality Settings For Dolby 2.1 Streams, Is the default --quality 5 insufficient? Options

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Not sure whether this has been addressed before. Had a look through the forums, but could not find anything at first glance.

Something I picked up quite some time ago with MP3 was that the surround channel in a Dolby 2.1 (is that the correct term?) stream contained severe artifacts even with fairly high quality settings.

I experimented with MPC, and found this to also be true to for --quality 5. --quality 6 is significantly better, but I lack the equipment and expertise to truly compare the original with varying quality settings.

My question is: is this reasonable cause for encoding albums at --quality 6 or higher? In my opinion, yes. I have seen mention of other parameters (--ms?) that could possibly provide better stereo encoding (which is where the surround channel data really lives, isn't it?).

Can anyone maybe confirm my findings and comment on whether I'm just being paranoid, or whether it is more appropriate to use other parameters for such streams, in stead of --quality 6?

Note that many albums (especially live shows) seem to have this type of surround channel information; I believe it's either intentional or a side-effect of the way 2.1 decoding interprets the audio.