I use Foobar2000 for managing and converting most files. I let iTunes deal with AAC encoding (AAC-LC, not ALAC). I have my daughter rip here CDs to ALAC as she lives in iTunes. From there we can use iTunes to make regular m4a files. And I can use fb2k to make the FLAC files. I rip to FLAC and...

FLAC and ALAC are both lossless, therefor there is no difference in sound quality. There is a great article about this on FLAC's Sourceforge site, http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison.html What matters when considering which to use? Encoding speed, usability, and to a lesser extent decoding...