you're ripping cd->mp3?
there is only 1 option if you care about music fidelity
well, there are more, but this is the only one i'd recommend.
download "exact audio copy" (its freeware). google for it, or search on download.com or something.
then download "lame 3.9x". i dunno what version they're on now, i think i'm using lame 3.90. this is the open source mp3 encoder that outperforms most commercial mp3 encoders these days.
exact audio copy rips your cds into wave files better than any program i've ever tried, and you can have exact audio copy run lame to encode your files for you, so it should be pretty transparent.
then again, you are using a freaking watch to listen to mp3s, so maybe you don't need the highest quality mp3 encode. i think formats like WMV work much better when you get to <96kbit bitrates.
typically i'll encode my mp3s at either 192kbit vbr, or 256kbit vbr.