LOL...Ok, bare with me here. Let me try first to stop laughing @ the "fixation" comment. I don't know why that makes me laugh so much ?
First let me say that no, I do not encode to .ape so that I can encode to various file types later. I like to stick to one file type if possible. If I want to post lossless files to usenet, I can always rip again..not a biggie.
2)I don't really have enough space to keep lossless on my HD's (believe it or not, Im still only dealing with under 60 gigs)
3)The third option you listed still doesn't really explain why I'm doing it so to explain :
Ok, here's the deal. As I said before, (and understanding this part is instrumental to getting what I'm saying) I noticed that during the .Ape to (in my case) Ogg conversion, the .ape files are FIRST DECODED back to .wav becore it actually encodes it to whatever format you want (again, in my case Ogg.) Now, the decoding process takes only about 4-5 seconds (or less) but still, this is an extra step. I'm curious to know why MC can't just encode straight from .ape to peoples format of choice ? Perhaps there aren't any native encoders which do this period...I don't know.
SO...really, the only reason I'm doing it (encoding to .ape rather than just straight to .wav.....and here comes the fixation part) is because I was told that if I encoded straight to wav rather than .ape, my tagging scheme might get messed up, but that if I encoded to .ape, all tags would be just fine. Thats' why I asked whether or not the tags would remain even through the decoding process.
Sure, encoding to .ape is faster than encoding to .wav, but my point is that it still gets decoded back to wav before the batch encodings...so why bother with the extra step ? I know I definitely wouldn't bother with that step IF what I said above about the tagging wasn't true. And if someone tells me that it isn't and can back it up....I'd totally skip the whole .ape conversion.
Please tell me you understand now.