Well, from recommendations from other sites, I decided to rip my CD collection with the LAME encoder through a third party app. All seemed to go fine until I find this forum and realize that I used an alpha version (3.97a7, I believe). All I did was encode using standard settings at 192 CBR. Realizing now what I did was use a testing only version has me really worried...or should I not be?

I guess what I'm looking for is some users with knowledge that can either say:
1. Nice going moron they will sound like crap!
or
2. Well, since you only used a CBR setting through a third party app you should be fine and don't worry about it.

I ripped through hundreds of CDs!!!

Thanks for any help

The 3.97alpha-series was one of those cases, where the alpha was apparently better than the stable-version (thus, the later 3.97alphas were considered better than 3.96). So, in this case you just striked lucky :)

Thus, soundquality will probably be okay - inside of the limits of CBR (VBR will result in more reliable/constant quality - but there are some rare cases where crappy hardwareplayers cant play VBR).

- Lyx

Thanks for the feedback!

I chose CBR strictly for compatability reasons, as you mentioned. Plus, I wasn't looking for the highest quality, just something that would sound decent (otherwise I would've gone lossless).

Upon coming here I read through many threads about LAME and the alpha versions. I was just afraid that my songs would have horrible artifacts making everything I did worthless.