One of the problems that I have run into is how to deal with multiple copies of my tracks. I would like to use APE for lossless playback locally. However, I need to use MP3 for a portable MP3 player (which I haven't purchased yet) and possibly streaming. It seems that there are 2 ways to handle this:
1. Only use APE for track storage. When MP3 format is required, MJB could re-encode to MP3 on the fly. The plus is minimized storage and the current library interface could be left alone. The minus side is that the re-encoding is processor intensive.
2. When ripping, encode to both APE and MP3. When displaying the Media Library, only show one of the two copies of the track (APE for the local machine, MP3 on the streaming clients). The plus is that the CPU won't be taxed re-encoding the same songs over and over real-time. The minus is that more storage space will be required.
Personally I prefer the second method. I tried converting a couple of CDs from APE to MP3 and it took a while on my P3 866, so I'm not sure if it is even a practical solution.
I'm sure there must be other options to tackle this problem. How are people managing this today?
Thanks,
Chris