As Chris has discovered, 11K sampling rates don't convert properly to MP3's. They have to be 22k or 44k, but can be in mono to save space. Don't get hung up on a particular WAV file, go back and resample the source if at all possible. Conversions from a low-quality sample just won't be pleasant.

As an advocate of minimalism, I've found Bladeenc, a very small (117k zip file download ) freeware program available from http://bladeenc.cjb.net, the developer's home page mp3.com, and many other locations, to be just the ticket. It looks like a DOS program (but it's actually a 32-bit Windows application, and available for many other operating systems, but tragically not Macs )--you run it with a command line just like the old days, but its simple to learn, works well and does not get you a bunch of corporate propaganda crap. And very easy to transport--if you're using someone else's computer and they don't have an encoder, you can download it and encode the wav file(s) and use it in a couple of minutes.

Waveflow, mentioned above, is a wav file editor that works well but it is slow. Acoustica is an attractive-looking alternative which runs much faster, BUT it messes with all the WAV files on your machine, such that other programs seem to have trouble running or encoding them afterwards, so I've junked it. I'd try it again if they eliminated this rude feature (the developer claims that they only change certain file info data which is permitted under WAV protocol, but it seems to have side effects).

Gotta admit it, frequent or extensive editing of 100-meg WAV files is an argument for the fastest, most-memory computer you can get your hands on. I manage with a Pentium 200k/32 meg setup.

Willie-O