Hi.

Regarding encoding times of lame:
Using my settings posted earlier in this thread, lame encodes at about 80% of playing speed (or needs 72minutes to encode a 60 minute CD). If I use CBR encoding instead of VBR, it is much faster than this (but I can't remember exactly how fast, I think about 2x playing speed). That is on a PIII with 500MHz.
If you use EAC to rip, try using its backgroud encoding option (EAC -> EAC Options -> Tools -> On extraction, start external compressors queued in background). It really helps alot, especially when batch-encoding a whole bunch of CDs.

cu,
sven


proud MkII owner (12GB blue/green/smoked, #080000113)