I'm really inclined to believe that there's something amiss with the plugin d'load features.
I've reported before that, when running through MC's options dialogue, and reaching the encoding settings, choosing mp3 or mpc throws a prompt that the required plugins are not installed and ask if the user wishes to d'load them now. Choosing 'Yes' sends MC off to find the plugin, which it does, it then d'loads and installs the plugin, and finally throws a dialogue that the task completed successfully. Clicking the OK button on this dialogue always causes MC to crash, losing any settings made in 'Options' prior to arriving at the 'encoding' options.
Going directly to the website and d'loading the plugins from there does not cause MC to crash. "so what's the problem" is basically the response I got. The problem is that it's extremely irritating, and as without doubt, retrieving the plugins from MC internally, as and when it informs you that you need to is by far the easier option, and most new users will surely go this way, which means that a lot of new users will experience their 1st MC crash very early in their trials which surely cannot be a good thing.