Thanks - that link was it.

I found that the best way to go is to use the EAC (Exact Audio Copy) front end and point it to your external compressor of choice.

EAC checks for song titles on the disc and if they are not there it polls CDDB. Next, it pulls the WAV files off your CD's and compresses each one-by-one.

I have been using LAME 387 set to VBR 128 (using the following parameters: -V1 -ms -h -q1). My CD's have been taking about half an hour each.

There is a long FAQ here that is a must-read.

pete