Free .mp3 encoding for Windows users:

go to www.musicmatch.com

click on the "Get MUSICMATCH Jukebox now" button. (The "Plus" version wants money.) Choose the "get basic" version. (free) fill out name and email, then scroll down and click "Download Basic".

Either Open it or Save it to Computer and Open it afterwards (run the installer)

[Optional] During the installation, you may want to choose "Custom" setup and UNCHECK all of the boxes for application defaults. is up to you.

Run the installed application MusicMatch. Choose the following menu options in this order: (perform each of these steps)

Options -> Recorder -> Format -> MP3

Options -> Recorder -> Quality -> Custom VBR (60%)

Options -> Recorder -> Settings [here you get popup property page]..

The "Custom Quality ( VBR )" button is selected, but the slider is at 60%. Slide full right to 100%

[Optional] While that page is still up, chose the upper right-hand button "Tracks Directory..." Choose your "directory for new" i.e. default dump directory. Can choose sub-directory conventions here too ("make sub-path using:" and "name track file using:")

OK the dialogs when done.

With the MusicMatch application open: Put an audio CD into your CD-Rom drive. Wait for spin-up.

On the MusicMatch application, choose the tab towards upper right that says "CD". The application will search the standard online databases (like CDDB.com) to find a match for your CD.

Click on the track you want to encode, then click the Record button. ... There are some discs that MusicMatch won't deal with: these tend to have data portions as well as audio portions. Try another CD if you think you have this problem. Some encoders do better at this than others.

CAVEAT: I did not use MusicMatch for my rips for this collection, but have used MusicMatch in previous versions in the past. YMMV.