Use Lossless Ripping Prior to Converting to MP3

The real advantage of having your CDs digitally archived is that you can transform your PC into a music entertainment center.  A 500 GB hard disk dedicated to housing WAV titles can accommodate roughly a thousand jazz or pop titles which a competent playback application like iTunes or the windows Media Player can easily organize into playlists that no CD jukebox hardware can rival.  You can double that amount of music your PC can store using the FLAC format which is compressed but lossless.  But maximizing your storage can be achieved with music files in the MP3 format.  At its highest bitrate of 320kps, you can have about 9,000 song titles in your HDD with near-CD quality sound.

But regardless of how much music you want stored on your PC, it is recommended that you rip your CD first as a lossless uncompressed WAV format (the container format for LPCM used in CDs) set at the standard 16-bit 44.1 KHz stereo encoding.  Once you have the WAV file that is essentially identical to what your CD contains, you can digitally manipulate the sound.  With a suitable sound editing application such as Nero, Soundforge, Goldwave or EAC, you can digitally increase or decrease the volume, equalize it, stereo-enhance, or transcode to any file format like MP3, FLAC, OGG, AAC , WMA and any other that is supported by your editing software and player.

The key is getting the most detail in your initial rip which only a competent WAV file extraction can do. If you rip at compressed format like MP3, some of the details, especially in the high frequencies get lopped off.  Manipulating it requires that editing software to be reconstituted the compressed file into uncompressed WAV.  No sound editing software can digitally manipulate compressed files. The end result of your manipulation is always less than detailed than if you started with a WAV file. 

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