"CD Quality" depends on the listener. Some people are fine with 128kbit. Plus, if you have a terrible CD player, your discs might sound like someone else's bad 64kbit MP3s.

I think the most recent general consensus has been 192kbit. On some passages on some discs discs you may be able to hear very noticeable differences.

Make sure you increase the high-pass filter setting if your encoder defaults to something low like 15kHz. 19.5 is enough - CD's are 20 but most people can't hear that high anyway.

Of great improtance when using VBR is also the VBR code being used. If you were to use a really badly programmed algorithm, it might not kick the bitrate up when it should and you'll be left with an inferior file. This is where reading up on the latest advances helps. Find recent threads talking about LAME and then find the sites linked that offer help with its best presets.

Bruno