[chamlin]

Apologies is this is the wrong place to post this. Please move if appropriate elsewhere. Computers???

1. What is the easiest and best programs for ripping? I currently use CDEX 1.51.

2. Trying to figure out which VBR settings to use. The manual gives the following options and I'm wondering about your recommendations:

VBR-Old: LAME's first functional approach, based on masking, bisection in the bit domain.

VBR-New: LAME's second approach, based on masking and direct noise allocation.

VBR-MTRH: a combination of old and new (VBR) routines

VBR-ABR: The Average Bit Rate (ABR) setting, the encoding principle is similar to what AAC uses as VBR encoding, it is based on perceptual entropy, but more like CBR than VBR. When you select the ABR option in the VBR Settings box, the ABR edit box will be enabled. In this edit box you can specify the target average bit rate. Of course, a larger bit rate will yield generally better-sounding (but larger) MP3 files.

I also use Audacity to transform .wavs to mp3 and mp3's to .wavs

Thanks,
Chamlin