You might get hooked on this new program for trading M  P  3  's. It's based on IRC and gives you instant access to HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF SONGS. It's a "sharing" concept. Everyone gets access to each other's M P 3 files... kind of like ICQ but better... a lot better. Did I mention it's free? Check it out at http://www.napster.com.

You'll love it. If you already have Napster, get a copy of Napigator at http://www.napigator.com

I'm using CDex from http://www.cdex.n3.net/ free with the built-in "LAME" encoder and am encoding at the 256 kbit rate to create high-quality results. (You could also grab a copy of BladeEnc for encoding if you want to try something different).
For those "tough" rips, ones that CDex has problems with, Exact Audio Copy (EAC) reigns supreme. http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/ Cost? He requests you send him a postcard

I previously used Audio Grabber but have boycotted it since it now contains a mechanism to negatively change system settings on your computer and force a lock-up if you don't send $25 to the authour. This is malicious vandalism. Would YOU trust a product that does this? I sure don't.

I'm presently using the LAME encoder that comes with CDex and am quite happy with it.
I used to use BladeEnc which is a free M P 3 encoder that supports bit-rates of up to 320 Kbps based on the ISO standard. I tried encoding with BladeEnc at all the various settings and found that I could hear the difference between 128 and 192 Kbps encoded songs. I have chosen to encode at 256 Kbps. This does tend to make the files twice as big as 128 kbit versions but I'm going for quality and clarity.
Go to the BladeEnc site at http://bladeenc.mp3.no to find out more.

Most of the encoders out there provide good quality at the higher rates. For encoding songs at 128 kbits or less, the Fraunhofer is the best one to use.

While the "Xing" encoder may be fast, the general consensus is that the quality is awful at all but the highest rates.

Convert M P 3 to wav
Hit CTRL-P in Winamp. Select plugins / output / diskwriter then press play. Winamp will quietly create your wav file. The wave file will be about 10 times larger in size (for 128kbit/44khz). Don't forget to change the setting back to "Nullsoft waveOut plugin" when you're done.

Enable the crossfade plugin
First download the plugin from http://www.winamp.com/ then just unzip it to your Winamp plugins directory... probably C:\Program Files\Winamp\Plugins. Start up Winamp, hit CTRL-P. Select plugins / output / Nullsoft Crossfading.

Volume: Automatically adjust (Normalize) on playback
One thing we all run into is that when we play songs, the volume levels can vary wildly between songs. This can all be controlled and adjusted automatically (audio-magically) by simply installing and running a Winamp plugin called Rock Steady which is buried under the "DSP/Effects" category under the plug-ins section at Winamp's site. Activate it under the "DSP/Effect" section of your plugin settings under your Winamp user preferences .
(Ctrl-P will get you to the user preference settings).

Rename files automatically
If you're considering renaming your M P 3 files, read on. I grabbed a copy of MPTagger (as Xorys suggested) and it worked very well for renaming 1,200 + M P 3 files. (Available from http://surf.to/mptagger). It enables M P 3 renaming on your right-click properties menu. You can set up templates and create new file names based on the M P 3's ID3 info as well as bit and frequency rates. (I wanted to incorporate sample rates into my file names and was finally able to do it with this program). I set my template up like this: #AR#-#ST# - #AL# +(#BI#@#FR#) which will give you Artist, Song Title, Album name, Bitrate and Frequency in a file name like this: Aerosmith-Walk This Way - Toys In The Attic +(256kbit@44100hz).M P 3. What I really like about this program is that if you decided to change your naming formats at a later date, you can still rename the files again with a different layout. This comes in handy after you've created a bunch of files that start with names like "The Beatles" and you decide you would rather name them "Beatles". Also handy if you want to change your file names to last name first like "Zappa Frank". The only quirks I ran into were that some files were misrepresented with unusual bitrates that didn't quite jive with what Winamp claimed them to be. Usually, this only occurred with strange bit-rates done at 22 kHz and was not a big concern to me. It also didn't seem to properly report variable bitrate songs. It tagged a 44Khz variable bitrate song with 48kbit@44100hz while Winamp showed it as 215Kbit at 44100.

I've added this program to my arsenal along side "Dupeless" and "multi-rename" (from www.pcmag.com ) which are also excellent tools for managing large archives of files. .

"Xorys" is probably one of the most helpful folks in the alt.music.mp3 newsgroup. If you're trying to figure out how to do something be sure to check Xorys FAQ page first.
"Happy Gerbs" has also become hooked on M P 3's. Check out the Happy Gerbs FAQ.
"Aeternus" is putting together the Aeternus FAQ page and also has some handy resources on this page.

Be sure to check out the pathetic work of Ed Runions and Jason Runions of “Wet Paint” aka “Wet Paint And Design” aka “Runions Home Renovations” as they attempted to paint a house (and failed miserably)...