Getting your cds on a portable player

You may have cds either because you still buy some for titles or versions not available at download stores like 7Digital or iTunes or maybe your left with some before you started downloading albums and wondered how to get them on your portable digital music player.
Their are programs in media players such as Windows Media Player and the ITunes program store users have to install as well as paid for programs like dbPoweramp that support a wide range file formats including so-called Lossless one such as Flac.
I've used dbPoweramp for a good while and like it but have been experimenting with the iTunes ripper to make Acc files so here's a few tips.
By default the iTunes ripper works at 128kbps which may of been okay back in 2004 but doesn't sound so good and isn't as good as Apples own iTunes downloads today so you need to navigate to Customs settings on the Import tool with a cd in and set the following:
Around 250kbps and enable variable bit rate which is pretty much what the iTunes store uses actually. That setting sounds very good while still making a smallish file for players with limited memory.
When ripping (importing) you'll see a tickbox every time asking if your cd is a compilation.
I learnt this the hard way but leaving it alone is fine if your disc has stuff by one named artist say The Bangles but will separate Adam Ant from Adam and the Ants on the same disc putting the in two separate folders which isn't much use if you just to listen to the whole album on one go! For anything like that you really need to tick Compilation which will make it an Various Artists listing but in the tags artist, song title and album name will show and you get one album file.
You do the same with classical cds with different orchestras playing different compositions.