what gives best results, 1-pass, multipass....?

[theDeviL]

what gives best results, 1-pass, multipass, 1-rst pass, multipass, nth pass?

[adam]

Theoretically, quality will increase with each additional pass up to a point. According to most authorities, the maximum benefit of multipass encoding is reached somewhere between the 3rd and 4th pass, so beyond this probably has no effect.

In practice, 1-pass VBR can have very good quality and can often match multipass in subjective quality.

To answer your question, nth pass encoding will achieve the highest quality.

[ZippyP.]

My 2 cents:
It seems to me that if someone is going to use multiple passes to try and improve quality that there may be a better way. i.e.Increase the bitrate.
So maybe it takes another disc, they're cheap. As always, it's personal preference. (I hope this doesn't start another CQ vs. 2-pass debate.)