I am also preparing for an Empeg mark2 and first time really got into encoding .mp3's. I have a lot of CDs (well, a couple of hundred) but ran into the problem of finding a decent mp3-encoder.

After a little work and research, I hear a lot of people were using things like MusicMatch 5.1 (www.musicmatch.com) or Xing's AudioCatalyst (www.xingtech.com) - while I have heard they were getting 'excellent reviews' from the magazines, I got really concerned whether they had covered the usual 'packaging','ease of use' etc. aspects too much.

I saw a comment about the LAME encoder (http://www.sulaco.org/mp3/) which seems to be an open source project, their webpage lists AudioGrabber (http://audiograbber.com/) as one commercial software that can use the LAME engine. I will myself give that one a try as many of my musician friends are referring AudioGrabber as a top-notch rip-utility.