I've had good luck with "Media Box" + LAME.

Media box (www.e-soft.co.uk I believe) is a cool little ripper, but it also has fun playback features lilke auto-dj mixing (cross fade, etc)

The only two downers are:
1> It uses CDDB only, not any of the free alternatives (free as in speech that is)
2> it's $25 to register..

Otherwise I've been having great luck with it + 192k abr lame encoding.