I'm actually happy to hear the xing praise... I used it for years. After reading a few different post on encoding and visiting a few sites I was conviced lame was the be all end all encoder! I do like xing, I don't like it's id3 capabilities though. I'll keep using lame for now.

As for my speed, it's gotta be my CD Roms, 1gig of DDR, 2 XP 1600's with a 4 channel Ultra 2 SCSI raid with 4 drives striped at 0 accross all 4 channels.... I'm thinkin definately has to be the CD Roms, I have a 12x 8x 40x Sony Spressa (not sure on the specs but I know it's a 12x cdr) and a Pioneer slot feed DVD (old).... The Pioneer is actually faster than the Sony.