I'm ripping a DVD (purely for the fun of it) and I noticed that when using --alt-preset 102 Lame encodes with a 32 Khz sample rate, while using --alt-preset 103 it uses 44.1 Khz.

I read in some post, that Lame was optimised for 44.1 Khz encoding, so should I avoid using 32 Khz? In addition to the --alt-preset I'm using -Y so 32 Khz makes a lot of sense as there's going to be no content above 16 Khz. But what if Lame does a poorer job at encoding when using 32 Khz? Maybe I should go with 44.1 Khz instead.

What do you recommend?

Is the 44.1 khz optimisation just a rumor?

There are some problems with 48khz sampling rate. That's why it's said Lame is optimized for 44.1.
I'm not sure about the lower sampling rates, but I don't think there's samekind of problems like with 48.

I just encoded the "The Matrix" soundtrack twice. With 32 Khz and 44.1 Khz sample rate. Takes a while on my puny Duron 650.

The 32 Khz version is notably less bad then the 44.1 Khz, which is especially evident during the credits with the "Rage Against The Machine - Wake Up" song. I'm at school right now and I could even tell the difference with the horrible soundcard of my IBM laptop and earplug headphones in a noisy classroom.

Both tracks were encoded using --alt-preset 103 -Y, and were pre-resampled with SSRC.

Note: I don't have a Duron laptop - I encoded on my computer at home using RDP.