I have been using Joint Stereo as well. It combines any mono components so they are not encoded twice - so the file is smaller. Some say a little of the stereo seperation is lost, but I am not so sure about that.
Forced Joint is out for sure, it does degradate the audio quality.
Not sure...
Was wondering if people found Simple, Dual Channel, or Joint Stereo to be better. I know to not use Forced Joint, and understand what Joint is, but what is the recommended setting by the other users since this is an unsupported feature. Thanks.