[Pantocrator]

Allright- I just screwed over 20 gigs of music and have to rerip all of the music. Let's just say I let iTunes do some stuff to my library that I didn't know it was going to do, and it would be a faster fix to just delete everything and start from scratch...

I want to rip audio losslessly. Most of my rips were WMA lossless, but my archos player does not support it, so I had to use WMP to sync the music to the player (I think it autoconverted it to 320 kb/s mp3). But soon, I am going to buy the new iphone, and therefore will have to go through iTunes, and also Apple lossless.
what should I do? I am thinking of ripping everything with WMP then using a converter to change it to Apple lossless, so I can use the apple with the iphone but keep the WMA for personal playback, since I do not use itunes. Or should I use flac?
I am basically hoping for some help organizing/ripping my music- which formats should I use? Also, what is a good player capable of playing a lot of files extensions? I have VLC for video, but the fact that most audio formats (lossless) are proprietary makes things annoying.

 

[breakfastchef]

Archiving CDs and other media should be done in a lossless format. Whether you use FLAC, WMA or other format is your choice. Then, you should make a second copy - let us call it the master archive - in case something happens to the first one. From there, you can convert your digital music for use on other devices as needed.

On any portable player I have used, I really cannot hear the benefit of using lossless files. The files are so huge that you will kill your storage capacity in no time. Rather, I suggest you convert the lossless files to mp3 (iPhone can play these) at rates of no higher than 320.

For software suggestions I recommend Exact Audio Copy (EAC) for ripping or MediaMonkey for ripping, converting and music management. Both are free applications for Windows. I do not use iTunes so I can be of no help to you there.

 

[Pantocrator]

Thanks, mediamonkey works like a charm- its just what I needed.