Okay, I'm ripping my CD's with EAC and I want to get the absolute highest quality I can get out of CBR MP3's, so far my LAME command line looks like this:

-b 320 -q 0 %s %d

Is there anything else I should add? I went ahead with -q 0 because it really isn't THAT much slower on my machine. Oh, and would Joint Stereo or standard Stereo encoding give me the best quality?

Use Joint Stereo for better quality, which is the default.

Added note: I should point out that I'm always trying to get the best sound out of the smallest size file. OTOH, it would appear that file size isn't that important to you, so I could be wrong on the above. But normally, Joint Stereo is better.

You'll want joint stereo, even at 320kbps. It should encode in joint stereo as default, but if not, add the -ms command.

Alright, so I'm pretty much at the highest quality I can get with CBR's? There are no other switches I should add or anything that would make quality even better?

And do you mean -m j?

You can add -m j if it makes you feel more comfortable, but since it is the default, it won't make any difference.

Alright, but there's nothing else I should add to get better quality out of the MP3's?

Nope, just -b 320.

And -V 0.

If he wants CBR, I think "-V" won't do the right thing. At least the manpage says it's for activating VBR.
For maximum quality CBR, I use "--preset insane", which results in 320/CBR as well. I don't know if this is different from "-b 320" though.

Correct. For VBR encodings, -b sets the minimum bitrate (-B sets the maximum), so specifying 320 kB/s would make no sense.


They're the same.

Does -q0 have any effect in the newer LAME versions? I think it's the same as -q1 and -q2 for --vbr-new at least, and probably has little effect in any other mode.

The problem with the -q switch has always been that its effect is hard to explain, it depends on what other switches were used, and it changes from version to version. Given that, the best advice is to tell everyone to NEVER use the -q switch, period!

I retract my earlier "-V 0" comment. Sure you can have a constant 320 VBR (ie "-b320 -V 0") file, but the only thing that I have been able to tell is that by doing so the file is slightly smaller than a "-b 320" only file. They sound the same to me. Then again maybe I'm not the best person to judge them as I couldn't tell the difference between a "-b 320" and a "- V 2" only file of the same source.

Me, I'd go with "-V 2" because the test I just finished showed that "-b 320" increased the size of the file by 57.8 percent with no perceivable benefit. Well, there is one benefit, you wouldn't have to encode as many files to run out of space. But, it's not up to me, so I guess paradox should go with "-b 320" or "--preset insane".