Where a lot of arguments emanate are how good rips at lower rates sound. i am very confident of the itunes mp3 rip quality (at 320 from cd, wav, aiff, master files).

ripping your cds at 320 using itunes is as good as any mp3 ripper can muster. If what you want/need is mp3 320 you can definitely go ahead without worrying. It is usually electric sounds that are messed up, simple acoustic sound is easier to encode to MP3. For example one will totally mess up some electronic drum machine sounds and the other might change the sound on some sampler. In other words the differences are NOT constant over time. When you listen and compare encoders don't just listen for a few seconds, the difference between encoders will show up in short transients only on some songs and some types of music. I've compared it to LAME based encoders and the Franhower SP?) encoder in iTunes gets it closer to right. OK so you need mp3? I think the encoder in iTune really is the best one. Disk space is so cheap now there is not reason to save space. More than one person here has found after spending weeks ripping CDs to MP3 that the job had to be done over to lossless. AAC (mp4) is better and 'lossless' is dead-on perfect. Later if you need some other format then you can convert the lossless to that format. I would rip to Apple losses using iTunes.

Xld mp3 256