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[mrmb]

I'm a new MC (12) purchaser. 

Several years ago, in order to burn compilation CD's, my son and I ripped our most favorite CD tracks into WAV's; we have approx. 120gb's. 

At that time, we had no need for cue sheets and tags [didn't really know they existed].  However, with the recent purchase of a USB DAC, and a potential need to encode for portable devices, having cue sheets and tags is a necessity.

Although I don't relish the thought of replicating lots of work already done, I would like to do ripping "right"; hence, the reason for this post.

In descending order of preference, the following are must haves:
     Audio Quality (Absolutely Perfect Media Replication)
     The Most Future Proof Format
     Tags
     Cue Sheets

The following attributes would also be pluses:
     Decoding Speed
     Encoding Speed
     Album Graphic saving ability
     The Ripper with Access to the Most Comprehensive On-Line Audio Database

Towards the goal of determining how to obtain these preferences, I've spent a lot of time perusing this forum, “Hydrogen Audio”, and the “Computer AudioAsylum”.   For me, saving space is of little, to no importance.   Having metadata is however of UTMOST importance.  So it would appear that I must rip losslessly.

Ripping to a lossless format such as Flac and APE appears to be the method of choice.  I have read debates regarding compression vs no compression, and suggestions that lossless compression can be a sonic detriment.  Without doing A/B tests myself, I’m leaning towards the side of there being no sonic difference.  Thus, I see no reason to rip to WAV or AIFF for audio accuracy, and in any case, doing so would eliminate tagging ability – correct?

With the conclusion, that lossless is as bit-accurate and sonically accurate as WAV, what would be the recommended method to maintain my above preferences?  Ninety-nine (99%) pecent of my CD media is pristine –no scratches, smudges etc.  Thus, based on: 1) bit-perfect rip; 2) ripping speed, which ripper would you recommend:  MC12, or EAC?    What lossless format would you recommend:  Flac, Monkey, WavPack?

I obviously don’t want to be doing this again in a few years; so, off-site back-ups will be maintained.  I also don’t want to have all my audio ripped to a format that may become obsolete; so, from that perspective, the format is important. 

Out of the three formats, it would appear that flac is the most hardware friendly, and has been defined as open source, so might it be the one that may be most future proof, and the one that is recommended?  Will a plugin allow me to rip with MC12 and encode to FLAC?  Or should I use EAC/FLAC; or just use MC12 to Monkey?

As I understand it [and I don’t understand it too well] metadata is maintained differently in Flac than in Monkey and Wavpack.  Which format maintains metadata in a form that is most easily transferable/exportable to another format now, and presumably in the future? 

Obviously, before committing many man-hours of effort, I would like to be sure that I’m headed in the direction that is best for my purposes now, and in the future.  Thus, I'm appreciative of any advice provided!

[jgreen]

I have to ask, why in the world do you need cue sheets?  Because if you can do without the cue sheets, you do not need to re-rip, simply convert.  Me, I would say goodbye to the cue sheets and the hassle of re-ripping.

As for audio quality, there is no difference between any of the LOSSLESS formats and the original digital file, be it WAV or AIFF.

I don't think there is any future-proofing difference between FLAC and APE, which are the only two formats I suggest you consider.  A recent upgrade to FLAC allows for storing of album art in the file, which is one of your requirements but not one of mine.  However, I don't believe the FLAC version used by the curent MC plugin allows for album art.  scthom, the MC customer who's written the third-party FLAC plugins, can answer that one.  APE stores album art internally, I believe.

For tagging, Alex B seems to be first among equals in terms of expertise.  My impression is that APE has a slight edge.

For decoding speed, FLAC has no peer among lossless formats.  The give-back is that encoding takes longer.  I'm not sure why encoding speed would even be an issue, it's not for me.

There is one more thing to consider, IMO.  All of the major media software packages support FLAC with plugins, and MC is no different--the FLAC plugin is written by scthom a great programmer who does have other time constraints.  So updates can take a few days.  However, with MC the APE plugin is written by the MC crew.  In my experience there have been a similar (small) number of issues with both FLAC and APE within MC.  However, with APE, if there is an issue, the MC crew jumps on it like a house on fire.  Understandable, considering the APE standard was written by the lead developer at jriver.  However, jriver is a strong supporter of FLAC and scthom's development work.

My preference is for FLAC, however my requirements are different than yours.  I like the open-standard of FLAC, and I like the fast decoding speed, easier on the computer.  Tagging differences aren't meaningful to me, and I don't care how many times I lose my album art (I lose it a lot).