I use Exact Audio Copy along with the freeware BladeEnc encoder to make my mp3s straight from CDs. While I don't do the step of going from .wav to .mp3 myself, I'm sure there are plenty of frontends ...

i just recently lost tons of my mp3 collection by accident. i did a disk recovery and i was only able to recover less than 1/5 of what i have. my question is what is the best mp3 ripper and encoder ...