After having read dozens of posts, I decided to encode using "joint stereo" (or mid/side stereo), as I wanted to encode at 192kbps maintaining both good quality and a reasonable file size. I wanted to ask more expert users a simple question (sorry if it's too simple): when burning joint stereo mp3s to make an audio CD, will the final tracks on the CD be standard stereo (the left/right stereo used in original audio CD)?

Maybe what I'm trying to ask is: will the resulting sound of a joint stereo mp3 song be standard stereo, when burned on an audio CD or on a mp3 CD, or even if simply read by winamp or another player?

If the answer is yes, I think that, from what I read in forums and websites, the safe joint stereo provided by Lame is probably the best choice.
The software I'm using: I recently got myself EAC and LAME (last stable versions), as on the net they really appear to be the best options for mp3 ripping and encoding. I'm a newbie, so I needed to trust others to start. It's been hard to learn about the loads of features and parameters I didn't know about, but rewarding at the same time. Thanks to you all, this forum has been really helpful for me.

aloa

Joint stereo is a method for encoding. Once the the file is decoded, it is plain stereo. It can't be otherwise. There is no such thing as joint stereo for wav files or CD.

thanks