If I want to rip songs from a CD, i use Audiograbber, and grab it as WAVE files 44,1KHZ,16Bit,Stereo (PCM). I cut away silence from the songs (leaving 0.1 seconds)

I don't use the encoder included in Audiograbber because i don't like the quality

Then, for encoding .mp3 files, i use SCMPX (a bit unknown player/encoder/decoder tool), that has the advantage that i can also batch encode....

I use following Settings to encode:

layer 3, 256 kbit/s, Stereo

the result is a file which sounds 99,9% like the original.. This may be a bit complicated, but works best for me