thanks for all of the guidance. i may try the rip only for the eac. EAC seems to be somewhat of a RAM hog and a little unstable on my xp box.

i think that CDex with lame 3.88 with VBR0 - min bitrate 192 / max 320 will be good.

do you think this will be equivalent to the EAC / lame 3.9 combo?

the EAC with lame encoding concurrently is very slow compared to CDex. I also like the way CDex creates a folder for the artist, album, and puts the appropriate songs in along with a playlist.

BTW, will extraneuos files like a playlist screw up the empeg in any way?

thanks again