Thanks so far for any information - it's amazing how fast people reply on this board and how kind they are!
In my first post I noted 2 bitrates - I added these just to point out that the enconding should be fast at these rates.

BTW: I know how the ripp, conversion, encode process works - I'm only looking for the best solutions on the market.

The biggest problem I find in _all_ application I tested so far is that CDDB and the Free version of this Database both are really not useful for large ripping amounts.
I wonder how Microsoft does it (they must have contracts with other companies...?). Whenever I use the Media Player it finds the CD-Information (even some weird Latin CD's...)

hmmmm - can't we abuse Mediaplayer to get the tags somehow ? :-)))

Thanks for any further tips!