CD Player

[YoG]

I'm only now starting to think seriously about going this route myself. I have 350 CDs, should I rip them as FLAC or as the original WAV files? It seems like disc space is not an issue anymore.

FLAC and WAV will not differ in quality. Only downside of WAV is that you cannot tag the.. if thats what youre concerned about... and yup they take up massive filespace.
I'd compress them to FLAC and tag your cd's using an online database (Foobar has one built-in, and a plugin for more flexibility)
I'd also use Level 0 when you convert the Flacs.. this parameter will take up a little more more space but put less load on the cpu when playing them (0 = less compression, 9 = highest, ..smaller but eats more resources).
Also make sure your media-devices support FLAC..(mp3player, streamdevice, server etc) otherwise you can try other lossless formats, like APE or lossless WMA

[Clive]

FLAC and WAV will not differ in quality. Only downside of WAV is that you cannot tag the.. if thats what youre concerned about... and yup they take up massive filespace.
I'd compress them to FLAC and tag your cd's using an online database (Foobar has one built-in, and a plugin for more flexibility)
I'd also use Level 0 when you convert the Flacs.. this parameter will take up a little more more space but put less load on the cpu when playing them (0 = less compression, 9 = highest, ..smaller but eats more resources).
Also make sure your media-devices support FLAC..(mp3player, streamdevice, server etc) otherwise you can try other lossless formats, like APE or lossless WMA

RE tagging, is this the same as CUE files? freedb seems to create a CUE file for WAVs with what seem like tags. I've ripped a couple of CDs using EAC plus Foobar to access them. Seems to work ok. I'm not really bothered about diskspace for 350 CDs, it's only a little over 200GB. When I started out in IT I was working with 5KB disk drives but now that 1TB disks are under 90 quid my CD collection can reside on spare space on my backup drives.

[YoG]

CUE files are primarily used for indexing a big audiofile (can be anything, mp3, flac, wav etc).. if your audioplayer supports it it can be a neat way play your files. I never use it, i like to have full control of my music.. But i may come in handy f.e. with a DJ mixset in MP3. MP3 always adds a little pause between two files, that is really anoying, particularly in continous (sp?) music streams.. but FLAC handles it nicely, so its a little obsolete now.
Another reason to choose for FLAC

I'd rather handle my tracks the basic way: all sliced up in seperate tracks instead of an index CUE file

I'm not really bothered about diskspace for 350 CDs, it's only a little over 200GB. When I started out in IT I was working with 5KB disk drives but now that 1TB disks are under 90 quid my CD collection can reside on spare space on my backup drives.

Yep, and make sure you make decent backups of your music.. i got myself a external usb harddrive of 1 TB.. that cost me around 120 euro (plm. 100 pounds)
Works great and gives a safe feeling over your 'candy'

[Clive]

I've got FLAC working with EAC now. The feeling I have is that I should use FLAC as the tagging may come in useful in the future, maybe for something like a Sueezebox one day, ie for show the track names?

[YoG]

Yeah, if you dont tag you must rely on filenames.. which are not ideal for organizing audio.. you can stuff a lot of info (if you like) in tags.. genres, year, composer etc.. etc.. very useful for quickly find what you need
Not only for Squeezebox.. anything that plays digital audio will handle TAGs (if not get rid of it now)