Best Way to Encode MP3s?

The 'best way' to encode mp3's is a fairly difficult question to answer as it depends on what you want in terms of quality, speedyness, usability or tweakability (plus any other factors you could think of).

Personally I use LAME to encode, and EAC to extract from CD, and I find alot of other people recommending this combination. This is because there are loads of different settings for the control freaks (like me) who likes to get everything setup to perfection. The downfall is that it is not straightforward to use and can be difficult to get used to, it took me some time to tweak the settings until I acheieved the results I desired. However once everything is setup it is relatively easy to rip a CD.

I'm sure there is lots of free software that provides alot more ease of use and makes it easy to get going, possibly at the expense of quality. I am not knocking anything this is just a generalisation. I will leave it up to other people to recommend other software they have found easy to use for themselves to you as most of my experience revolves around EAC/LAME (I won't comment on things I don't know lots about, as one shouldn't).

Although, if you had any specific questions relating to EAC and LAME which you could not find answered in tutorials or elsewhere, I would be happy to try to help you out.

Check out http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/ for info on MP3 and EAC\LAME. They have stickies on the top of the MP3 forum.