<< seems slow my p4 1.5 ghz does 192kbs wma's in ~20 seconds, ive never done mp3s so i cant compare it for you. >>
Exactly, you can't compare encoding WMAs on a P4 to encoding VBR MP3s on a Tbird.  Try encoding the same thing and compare...  I wanna see if I'm actually getting reasonable rates here or not.