First post : wma lossless bit depth, worth it at 24bit? Options

[omissis]

My salutes to the whole community
I'm a total newbie on this topic so I beg your pardon for any unwanted wrongfoot on my message!
I'm beginnning a job of audio cd archiving, there are approx 100 cds to rip, my goal is to have them set on WMA Lossless as I find myself more comfortable with the basic WMP.

Hardware:
Core2Duo, 2GB RAM, Vista SP2, 32bit, WMP11
Reader: Philips DROM6316, firmware ODNK

Ripper, EAC 0.99pb5

-accurate rip on
-caching off
-C2 off
-Accuraterip on
-Gap detection B, accuracy secure

I use Winamp for encoding and tagging jobs

The cds feature recordings from early 70s to 2008, most of them date back to 80s and 90s, cd are printed from original digital mastering done at the times no real remasters except for five or six cds which are 24bit remastered from tape masters of late 70s/ early 80s.

My questions:
-Does it make sense if I encode the wavs up to 24bit-44.1KHz to save room for storing the whole 16 bit data?
-Can anybody suggest a player which accurately reproduces the files , in the case that the default WMP does fail as an accurate player?

Thanks for any reply!
Max

[pdq]

-Does it make sense if I encode the wavs up to 24bit-44.1KHz to save room for storing the whole 16 bit data?

This makes no sense at all. The CDs only contain 16 bit data, so the remaining 8 bits will all be zero.

[omissis]

Don't know wheter this is a legend or not, I've read that sometimes not all the 16 bit informations are captured if you rip at 16/44.1, so do you suggest to go for 16/44.1 ?

Also, what about the player?

Thx again!

[Nick.C]

CDDA is by definition 44.1kHz, 16 bit when interpreted.

I would suggest:

FLAC as your lossless codec - compatible with far more devices than WMA-L;

foobar2000 as your player.

[omissis]

Thanks!