Please, do not use VBR on the music rips. Its invention was completely stupid...save a few miserable bytes and in exchange, you get swishy, phased audio as bitrates fly by haphazardly. I guess people who use VBR are only listening to their mp3's on cheap, stock PC speakers and cannot tell the difference (I can even tell it on the worst speakers). And if you just like that tinny effect, Joint Stereo is another good bet for degenerating the original signal. Yeesh!