A couple of questions as I reacquaint myself with MC:
1. I imported a ton of albums from iTunes; some are displayed in MC as First Name, Last Name; some are Last Name, First Name.
I can't figure out why some are one way and others the other. I can force one way or the other with album artist, but I don't think that's what the album artist field is for. I got used to First/Last from iTunes so I don't much care, as long as they're all the same...
What am I missing?
Do you mean the Artist field only or something else?
MC reads the Artist tag and fills the library field with that info. If separate words are in a certain order in the file tag MC does not change that order.
In MC the "Album Artist" field is for this:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=33515.msg247570#msg2475702. I keep getting bitrates of 114 to 125 or so no matter what I set up in the encoding options. I'm aiming for 192 VBR... but it's not giving me that result
You could try the MP3 VBR High setting. Its nominal bitrate is about 192 kbps. The actual resulting average bitrate can vary greatly. A quiet old mono track can be below 100 kbps. A modern, loud and compressed rock track can be 250 kbps. The VBR mode is designed to produce constant quality instead of constant bitrate.
Also, check the bitrate inside MC. Windows Explorer cannot display correct VBR bitrates.
EDIT
I forgot to mention that MC has separate encoding options for CD ripping, file conversions, sound recording, Library Server, Tivo Server, UPnP Server, data CD burning and portable player synch. You didn't mention what you tried to do. Perhaps you tried to adjust the settings in a wrong place.