"Best" does not equal "Fast". If you have a lot of CD's, I'd recommend doing them correctly rather than quickly or else you end up doing what I did and re-rip them because the empeg has such great audio quality that you'll be able to tell the difference. 160kps or 192kps at the very least, or go with VBR encoding so you get high resolution when you need it and low when it wont matter (to save space).

Exact Audio Copy and Lame is the way to go. I ripped w. Music Match at 160kps CBR twice, then at 192kps (with a CD collection that has over 400 CD's) before I switched over to EAC and Lame VBR's. Think of how much longer it took me because I was in a hurry..

I posted an EAC setup guide here a few weeks ago.

One thing that makes EAC faster than it seems is that you can pop in a CD, let it rip and then pop in a 2nd CD before the first is done encoding and rip that. A queue will build up allowing you to pop in CD after CD all day long and let it encode over night. With MusicMatch, I was only able to encode 3-4 CD's a day while at work, but with EAC I could do as many as would fill my HD. If EAC is running and has 20 songs in the queue, you can close down EAC, allow that current encoding to finish then when you re-start EAC (even after a re-boot), EAC will resume with the queue. So I ripped CD's all day at work, turned off the notebook, took it home and let it encode while I slept.

Oh, the mp3s sounded way better too and were often not that much bigger in size than a 192kps CBR file depending on the song.