Good insight, I'll be trying EAC on my next ripping session. What about LAME's settings? I realise lots of you use lossless compression, and I'm planning to give it a comparative listen when I have a spare hour or two, but I'm always transferring stuff to my portable MP3 players too, so MP3 and WMA are more functional for me. I, too, don't have golden ears!
As for MP3, I typically use a 160 or 192 fixed bitrate, with LAME, using the high quality setting. Without significantly increasing file sizes, what can be done to improve sound quality?