I am an iMac, MacBook Pro & die-hard iPod user with 160gB, 80gB and 60gB iPods. I'm neither lazy nor a drinker of the cool-aide, but I do like the Apple environment for their products. I've ripped my 1100~ CDs three times before; 128kB AAC, 320kB VBR AAC and ALAC. My HDtracks downloads are in AIFF. Each of these libraries corresponded to what I was using digital music for 100 mile a week bike commute, upgrade to quality IEM's; music in the office with good cans and an HP amp & an excellent iPod interface for the Fender 400w/9 speaker system in my R line Beatle. ALAC and FLAC are virtually identical to each other with regard to SQ and file size. AIFF and WAV don't sound better and have immense file sizes. Thanks to a corrupt back-up my library got Swiss-cheesed with a bunch of randomly scattered incomplete song files and CD folders. So I'm ripping my library for the hopefully the 4th and last time with dBpoweramp and this time it will be in FLAC for the simple reason that it's the highest quality open format. No "W" this or "A" that. As long as I'm still using iPods I'll keep using iTunes with an ALAC copy of my FLAC library, both of which will fit on a 1Tb drive. Given the easy and affordable conversion to (2) 256gB micro SD cards for the iPod hard rives and batteries I may be using them indefinitely. But if I want to switch to a Fiio X5 or other player software VOX, Daphile, etc. I'll be all set with the FLAC library. I still listen to the CD for serious listening, but am considering a Mac mini as a headless server running Daphile at some point. Even so my CDs aren't going anywhere.