I did notice that when using Lame externally it took quite a bit more time for the encoding. The ripping time was the same, about 5 to 6 mintues for an entire CD. It's a Samsung drive and was given to me since my other drive gave up. I would like to get a Plextor someday but can't afford it at the moment. I haven't had a chance to test a .wav file yet but will sometime today.