That's the way... uh-huh, uh-huh... I like my encodes.
If you want I can provide the lossless rip (with .cue+.log).
EDIT:
Additional information
Some early MP3 encoders didn't make ideal decisions about what mode to use from frame to frame in joint stereo files, or how much bandwidth to allocate to encoding the side channel. This led to a widespread but mistaken belief that an abundance of M/S frames, or the use of joint stereo in general, always negatively impacts channel separation and other measures of audio quality. This is not an issue with modern encoders. Modern, optimized encoders will switch between mid-side coding or simple stereo coding as necessary, depending on the correlation between the left and right channels, and will allocate channel bandwidth appropriately to ensure the best mode is used for each frame.
The above text was taken from this page:
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Joint_stereo
And since I've been using "LAME3.98.2" (whilst outdated, a modern encoder) for encoding this album and most of my albums... You shouldn't really worry about quality of the stereo setting.