Best .wav to .mp3 converter program?

i'm gonna start backing up my music cd's and creating mp3's out of the them and in the past i've just used windows media player but i was curious if there is another program out there that converts wav's to mp3's faster and maintain better quality.

I also want the program to create the appropriate folders for each cd such as:

the cd artist/cd album/then song name

please let me know what you think is the best program to use if there is a better one than windows media player.

thank you

Media Monkey is a nice audio program easy to set up the library and convert playlists to mp3, which means if for what ever reason your mp3 files change locations you still have the playlist. I think it's $30 with lifetime upgrades It will even create an Excel spreadsheet of you your collection.
http://www.mediamonkey.com/

Keep in mind there is a difference between ripping CDs, copying them to a computer, and converting an existing file to another format, e.g., wav to mp3. Music on a CD are not wav files, forget what they are right now and don't have a CD handy to check. wav is an uncompressed audio file while mp3 is a compressed file. It's best to create the highest level mp3, at least 128 but better 192. I always set it at 320, the highest for mp3 but it's probably overkill. The higher the bit rate, the more space the file takes but given how cheap hdd are, it makes sense to rip to the higher bit rate.

You can use software like CDex which is simple and easy to use to me...