I did a subjective listening comparison of three encoders this weekend - mp3enc, bladeenc and AudioCatalyst 2.1.

I encoded at 128 on mp3enc (its maximum), 192 on bladeenc and VBR-High (160-256) on AudioCatalyst 2.1. Surprisingly, AudioCatalyst sounded the best to my ears, although even with VBR the filesizes were slightly larger. Compared to the original CD, all three weren't quite as bright, with some loss at the top end, but the AC one had the least audible defects in the playback and the best dynamic range.

Even increasing the encoding to 256 on bladeenc did not noticibly increase the quality. I was dissapointed with mp3enc, which was supposed to encode 128 like others encode at 192, as it sounded just like 128 from AudioCatalyst to me. Oh well. The commerical version is too expensive for me to test it.

As for rippers, CDDA does the best job - far superior to the ripper in AC in terms of speed. But I'll use the ripper in AC, as it automates the process more to my liking.

For reference, listening was done with Dynaudio 240mkII 2-way separates and two JL Audio 12W6s via 2 McIntosh MC420 amps.