Lossless audio formats?

[Raghav]

Flac seems to be the consensus but I have major issues with it.

1. iTunes support
2. iPod support

I can immediately rip into mp3 and lossless filling in the artist, album data and my ratings. All the smart playlists get updated and songs are transferred to iPod. I cannot sacrifice this ease of use. Usage is not playing songs from my laptop, but transferring them to the iPod / Media player for listening. Apple lossless would save hard disk space whereas wav would give total flexibility.

Considering that what is my best option?

 

[asliarun]

Flac seems to be the consensus but I have major issues with it.

1. iTunes support
2. iPod support

I can immediately rip into mp3 and lossless filling in the artist, album data and my ratings. All the smart playlists get updated and songs are transferred to iPod. I cannot sacrifice this ease of use. Usage is not playing songs from my laptop, but transferring them to the iPod / Media player for listening. Apple lossless would save hard disk space whereas wav would give total flexibility.

Considering that what is my best option?

I really don't want to start a flamewar, but as per forums such as Hydrogen Audio, there is no audible difference between lossless formats such as FLAC and 320kbps mp3s. This has apparently been proved multiple times in double blind tests.

Please note that I am not advocating anything. I'm only say this if storage space is a severe constraint, and/or if your music device does not support a format like FLAC, you can consider 320kbps mp3.

 

[sound and music]

If I am in your position, I will rip every CD into FLAC for storage/archieve purposes as well, and then depending on the size of the media players will GO FOR 320/256 mp3 AND OTHER FORMATS.

I have realized that after ripping my mysic into FLAC, I am listening to most of my CD collections (before ripping I was listening to justa few ones) which in normal circumstances would hate to do so because usually there are 3-4 songs which I like on each CD and I am too lazy to keep on putting/ejecting CDs into my Marantz CD player frequently...