Older versions of LAME (quality thereof), Moved from MP3 - Tech Options

[Slitty]

I have a large 320kbps collection of mp3s from different sources. I've only recently began exploring the technical aspects of music compression, and subsequently noticed that parts of my collection were encoded with LAME as old as 3.88 and even 3.82. Should I expect these to be of worse quality than music encoded with newer versions of LAME? Is there any way to determine the version used of mp3s made with other encoders?

[shadowking]

3.88 is decent for high bitrate CBR 192 + and GOGO is based on it. 3.90 is another good one allowing both the old and new methods. Really at 320k you have nothing to worry about unless some crazy switches were used.

[lvqcl]

unless some crazy switches were used.

for example, because of poor hardware:

I know [...] that I should use --alt-preset cbr 128 or --alt-preset 128 if I want an ~128 kbps encoding, but my crappy MP3 players skips and pops if I don't use the parameters below.
[...]
"--apeinput -b 128 -m s --nores --noshort --strictly-enforce-ISO"