> Why exactly? I haven't spent the time to stay up on codec development. I by all of my music in a physical format (usually a CD). I like the redundancy and th

> Why exactly? I haven't spent the time to stay up on codec development. I by all of my music in a physical format (usually a CD). I like the redundancy and the DRM free-ness of it. The last time I seriously investigated (and ripped the bulk of my library) was in 2005 when I was also active on Oink. The prevailing opinion then was that EAC with LAME and VBR was the best trade off of a secure rip, high audio quality and small file size. To let iTunes rip with it's default AAC codec produced to many errors. Also, at the time I was on a Windows machine and iTunes was so bloated and slow I refused to use it. I had an early iPod with Rockbox which freed me from the need to ever use iTunes. When I got my MBP, I initially used RubyRipper. Then I found XLD and have been happy with it since (using LAME+VBR settings).