I would guess so as you are the first that I have ever heard say that. Your settings are wrong I'm sure. You may have created a 96k mp3....or am i doing something wrong?
Well say you rip it in full format (AIFF, WAV, etc) and the file is 16megs. In MP3 format the file size could be as little as 3-5megs. This encoder still retains full quality while still shrinking the file a bit, it's still bigger than an MP3 but smaller than the AIFF. Probably be around 10-12megs.