What determines which encoders/settings you use. (2011) Options

[antman]

Isn't this a new years tradition.

I thought instead of doing yet another "which lossy/lossless/bitrate do you use" poll, we'd do something a little different. I'm more interested in the reason why people use which encoders and settings they do.

And to start:

Lossy: Compatibility, MP3 (AAC tags have given me problems in the past, mostly on cell phones).
Lossless: Compatibility, FLAC (if a media player doesn't support FLAC, there's a plugin somewhere that will make it).
Encode: Absolutely pack out whatever mp3 player/cell phone I got. I can't ABX for shiznit. V5 most of the time, V4 when I'm feelin fancy

Compatibility can also be read as: compatibility with the devices I own.

I know there's gonna be a firestorm for leaving a quality as an option on lossy, but we're adults here. Let's be civil.

And maybe this way we'll a trend not just within codecs but for everyone that's on here.

[antman]

Agree with DonP that the poll is not well designed (I choose my encoders for both compatibility and quality reasons), so I'm not going to participate in the official poll, but here are my current strategies:

I'm sorry if my poll has offended you. It was late and kind of thrown together. Next year there will be a pre-poll to determine which choices will be added in the official poll.

I just wanted to try something a little different. I don't think there's any doubt that in the standard poll that FLAC/LAME would reign supreme, again. But in this day and age you can find happiness in which ever setup you use. I just wanted to know why you use what you use. Today you could use WMAL & WMA exclusively and doesn't make you bad person.

I thought the third question was truly the most interesting. I wanted to know who actually base settings on what they hear and not what the superpowers on here hear.