I am currently ripping my music off of my CDs and putting them on my iPod. I want the best quality possible, so I want 320kbps CBR with joint-stereo (Joint-stereo is better than stereo even at this high of kbps, right?)

I have EAC set to do 320kbps, but in the additional command line box I just put "--preset insane" without the quotation marks of course. I have seen people write it differently, or put alt in front of it or just use -b 320 or something. Is the way I have it written work best, "--preset insane"? Is --preset insane getting the best MP3 compressed audio sound I can?

Also, is 320kbps CBR with joint-stereo the highest quality with LAME I can get that is compressed audio, or would anybody suggest something else, or normal stereo, as joint-stereo preserves the left and right channels, right? (In my tests I have found that audio still goes from left to right as normal) Does joint stereo have any chance to mess up and not separate the channels when they should be?

if you want the best quality, why don't you use AAC?

--preset insane = -b 320 = 320 Kbps CBR

Also check this: http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Joint_stereo

As far as I have read, I heard that the difference between 320kbps MP3 and 320kbps AAC is practically non-existant, or is it different? Plus, MP3 is more common and normally works with many different platforms.

Joint stereo and intensity stereo are not the same, right? --preset insane is using joint stereo and not intensity stereo, right?

yes, MP3 is more common. But if you don't mind the diference between MP3 and AAC, you would probably don't mind the diference between CBR 320 and -V2, or 3. you can check for yourself.

What program should I use to test this out? So it would be 320kbps joint-stereo AAC? Also, I was reading about joint stereo on the wiki link that was sent in this thread, and it said something about "quantization noise". Is quantization noise good or bad, and what is it?

you need to do a double blind test. look for it on the wiki

Which encoder would you say does AAC well, and which program?

iirc lame doesn't use intensity stereo, it only uses the ms stereo method when joint stereo is selected. fhg encoders though still uses intensity stereo at lower bitrates, < 96 kbits.