FLAC is just a way of storing and compressing music files without losing any information (lossless). Kind of like a zip file if you will. Yes, you could rip your cd's to WAV, but then you will have problems using that file format in a lot of music playback programs as you cannot tag them properly so things like artist and tack information may not show up properly. If it's worth it to you, that's a question only you can answer. It will take some time depending on your collection, but then you would be able to go through your collection from your armchair and not have to get up and change cd's if yo so wished. Do you mean is it worth ripping your CDs to 24-bit FLAC? In that case, no, CD is 16-bit, you won't add anything to it by ripping to 24-bit, however your contention that the CDs are 'missing detail' is entirely erroneous, that's a conversation for another day however.

You CAN rip the CDs to 16-bit FLAC but if you already have the albums on FLAC download I can't see any reason why you'd bother (in the case of the Beatles), for anything you don't have on FLAC already I'd say go for it, the audio quality will be the same and if you have a decent streamer then it should be much more convenient. Nils Petter Molvaer Baboon Moon. Tonky wrote: Lossless files potentially better than playing cds.? I have come across statements stating that this is so.

(I am very happy with the sound quality from both as it happens). If someone could tell me the reasons why lossless streamed files might be better I would be greatful - thanks. The theory is when playing a CD the CD player has one chance to read the data correctly in real time, if it misses anything it has to guess what should be there, whereas when ripping a CD the PC can re-read the CD as many times as it likes in order to retrieve all the data. Whether it's possible to notice this or whether it even happens with anything other than a filthy/damaged CD is anyone's guess.

You can at least be certain that the rip will not be WORSE than the original CD. Tonky wrote: Lossless files potentially better than playing cds.? I have come across statements stating that this is so. (I am very happy with the sound quality from both as it happens).

If someone could tell me the reasons why lossless streamed files might be better I would be greatful - thanks. Tonky in theory, less chance of jitter / issues with error correction when you remove the playback/transport device of the cd drive. +1 Don't understimate this, a well set up computer with a half decent media player configured properly will be as good a digital source as you can get.

SteveR750 wrote: +1 Don't understimate this, a well set up computer with a half decent media player configured properly will be as good a digital source as you can get. +2 Ripping CDs to lossless audio files is a great way to listen to CDs. When you rip with error correction you will give your computer the time to get bit perfect rip, which is impossible when your CDP decodes the CD on the fly. We have ripped all our CDs to Apple Lossless files and stream the through the Airport Express to the DAC. Better CD sound than from any CDP I have ever heard. I agree with the guys here about the quality. I'd like to mention the convenience of having your whole CD collection ripped and stored either on your PC, external hard drive or NAS (Network Attached Storage).

Free Lossless Audio Codec; Developer(s) Xiph. And decompress to an identical copy of the original audio data. FLAC is an open format with royalty-free licensing.