I use Audacity as a learning tool, and figured i would grow into Reaper or Cubase. I wouldnt know how to exploit all the extra functionality so figured Audacity would serve the purpose for now.
I'll check out your link and give it a try.
thanks

btw: i wasnt compressing the size of the wave file, i was referring to dynamic range compression before exporting to wave format. If i send the audacity file to the lame encoder the way you do in Reaper it seems to sound worse than saving as a wave first, then importing into Wavelab - then to mp3 (this program also uses Lame so not sure why it would be any different)