I'll bet that when I cut back my simultaneous threads to just one (instead of the four I was running when I thought I was getting 4x encoding speed) will solve the problem of Lame locking up my EAC sessions as well.

If you have one of the newer hyperthreading CPUs or a dual CPU box, then you might want to try running two encoding tasks at the same time. Otherwise, one thread is definitely the way to go. Of course, none of this should effect the stability of the ripping process...

Another option for batch encoding that you might ponder is using Apple's iTunes. You can tell iTunes to rip everything to WAV. Then, you can select all the WAVs at once and ask iTunes to encode them. Plus, you're not stressed out about the filename length limitations because everything is stored in iTunes internal database.