If you click the link in my signature, you'll be taken to a little tutorial I did for EAC.

Generally, people now use the presets built into LAME to get all the best settings. Doing a preset bypasses all the "switches". I use "--alt-preset standard" but there is also "--alt-preset extreme" and "--alt-preset insane". Each is better than the previous and uses more disk space. (Also known as APS, APX and API).

These presets represent very complex settings that people much smarter than me are constantly tweaking. I also recommend using the build of LAME in my tutorial. It was actually done by the guy that created LAME instead of the more common versions that were done after he left the LAME developer group.