Now that I own an iPod, I am going to work on completely ripping all of my music and then organizing them into the proper playlists. Here is how I am going to go about it:
1) Rip with Exact Audio Copy
2) Encode with LAME 3.96.1 (–alt-preset standard)
3) Import into iTunes 4.8
4) Add album art using Amazon.com and the amazing method of drag & dropping it into iTunes
5) Make sure each band has the proper genre attached to their songs.
6) Create playlists for certain music periods (for example: Grunge), different types of moods I’m in (for example: cruising music), and so on.
7) Profit!
Using Lame with that setting is a good move – the quality is very good. The iTunes MP3 encoder isn’t that good.
The iTunes Art Importer might help you import album artwork faster.