Distorsion (whirling, whistling) appears at -V3. Lower presets are somehow better, V2 isn't affected.

Not that simple: around 5 secs. (whoowhoo)
Armed and dangerous: Guitar note whistling around 0~1 sec.
Agadot: vocal "Kama zeman" 'Kama' is distorted (kwaee-ma zeman)

Where are the originals so we can compare?

These are the originals. I am attaching the mp3's.

A LAME 3.97 and LAME 3.98b3 -V0 --vbr-new bitrate comparison with 25 various music tracks.

A zipped Excel sheet with a graph:

Click to view attachment

Let me upload here another hard sample.

I seem to fail to ABX it at -V 2 on Lame 3.98 since on my right ear is kinda blocked. I got 4/4 on -V 5 since the first the few seconds had warbling I also tried it with LAME 3.97 and got the same results.