>>29
I know what the lame options are. I also know that they're not the recommended ones. Read those two threads and be enlightened.
Second, I think you missed the point to
>>25. The assumption was that you'd make the encodes from the same lossless source (ie, a wav file freshly extracted off a CD). Anybody familiar with mp3 will make that assumption without realizing it. Transcoding is a crime, don't do it, ever.
If you transcode an mp3 to mp3, of
course the VBR will sound worse. But if you encode both from the same raw source, VBR will be significantly superior to CBR every time.