2¢...2¢!!! If you're not going to purchase WAVE or FLAC for the perceived increase in quality, at least purchase them for the purposes of longevity. 16K+ tunes off CD and counting. I've compressed all to FLAC as a lossless codec that support ID3 tags at half the size of the source material. I've then been able to: - transcode to ATRAC for MiniDisc - transcode to WMA for Media Centre - transcode to 192kbps M4A for the car's iPod - transcode to 512kbps M4A for SSL and can decode to WAVE for use in whatever audio editor without compromising quality, or whatever is the latest-and-greatest format at the time. (Granted sites like Bleep are releasing 24-bit WAVE versus the 16-bit FLAC I'm using at the moment, but those are generally coming straight from Warp's master catalogue rather than CD) The benefit of spending a little extra coin in the first instance will save you some heartache in the long run. Not sure how long y'all have been running with the digital downloads but when tunes were first released, people were arguing 192kbps MP3 were sufficient to play in a club while they couldn't hear the difference in 320kbps MP3 and they took up too much space... As the likes of M4A becomes more prolific due to iTunes and Juno Download (and with a lot of AxB suggesting lower bitrates of M4A outperforming higher MP3), if there's a shift in the future to a different codec of choice, if you have lossless material you'll be fine. Transcoding from one lossy format to another? *ewww* Remembering listening to that 4th-generation dub on a TDK C60? Yeah. Like that.