I use two different programs. The first is an old version of dBpowerAMP Music Converter. It's the old version cos that's when it was free. It embeds into your right click button and converts to and from wav and mp3, either blade or lame, at fixed or variable bitrate, anywhere from 32 to 320 kb/s. I don't think the program is free anymore, but you may be able to find an older version of it somewhere.
The other program I use is called CDex, which I use when I want to extract sections from a CD as one mp3 (or as one wav). For example, I can use it to create a single mp3 of an entire album. Or if several tracks run together, I can use CDex to create a single mp3 of these tracks, with no gap in between them.
By the way, for anyone interested, I found a nice free mp3 editing program called mp3DirectCut. I use it mainly for editing out long silences at the end of some tracks, or joining mp3s together, creating fades, stuff like that. Easy to use, too.
cheers,
supervij