Hardware Avenue have posted a definitive guide covering pretty much every aspect of PC MP3. Heres a bit:

audio.

    "How many times have you listened to MP3s only to find them ruined by clicks, pops, skips and overall poor sound quality?

    Now, this is curable. There is a lot of information about MP3 on the web. Unfortunately, it's also largely scattered hither, thither and yon and worse yet, some of it is old and out of date. What I want to do here is collect some of the valid and useful information into one place, add some helpful tips thus giving you a starting point for creating and playing back quality MP3s."