Well, after doing some research in the posts, guess im ready to post my questions:

Ive been used to rip and encode to MP3s a long time. Problem is the best MP3 encoding method seems to change every couple of years. From CBR 128 to --r3mix and now settled with VBR --aps.

Thing is: i dont mind re-encoding all over again, from time to time, if that means better quality or better fit to my needs (back to 128cbr for a portable, for example). My Library is not not big, so its not a big deal.

What i really cant stand is re-ripping. Time consuming, error-prone, and i dont want to further scratch my CDs. Keeping the wavs solves the problem, but.. ouch! They´re huge, and have no tags.

So, guess its about time to go lossless. it will gimme the flexibity i want to re-encode whenever and howerver i want, without having to handle full 600+ MB wavs per album.

Question is: HOW?

What is the painless method, if any? Im quite a savvy user, but still newbie to lossless and foobar and stuff, so detailed hints and guides will be gladly welcome. Here are some guidelines:

1 - I want lossless only for archiving purposes. So main concern is compression ratio. Fast encoding is welcome too, but not crucial, as i´ll do it only once, when ripping. And, i dont plan to actually listen to the lossless songs, only to keep them, i couldnt care less about seeking times and stuff. Finally, as i (hope) not to transcode to mp3 too frequently, decoding speed is nice, but again, not essential. bottomline: for me, zipping them would be fine, but ive heard lossless are more powerful, and they have tagging.

2 - Reading this Lossless forum, Ive heard great things about both Monkey´s APE and FLAC. From what ive read,i think APE may suit best my needs, as its compression is higher then FLACs. Or am I missing any other of the not-so-famous encoders, that may fit better my particular needs?

3 - I use EAC for ripping. Any hints on how to setup it for your reccomended encoder? i mean basic stuff line command line or any other hint...

4 - Is there any way to automatically rip to both lossless AND lossy? How? Today, when i finish ripping EAC, i end with with 2 sets: the wavs and the MP3s. I want to end up with mp3s and lossless, both tagged.

So, now that i´ve explained my scenario, what do you recommend?

Tks, and sorry for such a long post... i promise in the next i´ll cut to the chase...
MEstreLion

I am using flac with EAC to make my lossless archives. http://www.saunalahti.fi/cse/EAC/index.html will give you the skinny of how to setup eac with flac. You could also use Monkeys with EAC as well. I use Foobar2000 to convert the flac archives into any other lossy format I may want. Since my only portable device at the moment is an mp3 capable cd player, I turn the flac or monkeys files into aps
mp3 files, and then burn these onto a cd. Monkeys does give you smaller files, at the expense of slightly slower encode/decode times. Flac has advantages with portability, streamability, and better error handling capabilities. From what has been said on these forums, wavpack version 4 may be the bomb when it comes out! The nice thing about lossless, is you can always convert from one lossless format to another at will. Most of my files at the moment are monkeys, but I have been doing all my new cds in flac. I am too lazy at the moment to convert the monkeys files into flac.

I store my lossless files on a usb 2.0 external 120 gig drive, and I do play them on my pc, as well as make lossy files files form them. Good luck in whatever you decide to do. The lossless club is a nice, no regrets club indeed.

edit I fogot to add that wavpack and optimfrog can create a lossless AND a lossy file at the same time when you rip to them.

I use Flac with EAC using the following command line...

%s -6 -T "artist=%a" -T "title=%t" -T "album=%g" -T "comment=EAC=>FLAC 1.1=>Vorbis 1.01 @ q8" -T "genre=%m" -T "date=%y" -T "tracknumber=%n"

...and turn off all other tagging options (such as the mp3 specific) scattered within EAC.

From there I burn them to DVD+RW. This is cool because then you can Drag-n-Drop to say...OggDropXPd, and not sacrifice a ton of HD space (though I still have alot of flacs stored there). LameDropXPd doesn't handle flacs directly (yet) AFAIK.

xen-uno

I've been archiving all my music with Monkey's Audio using the create image and cuesheet feature in EAC. Once the file is encoded, I load the CUE in foobar and replaygain it. Then, I add the contents of the cuesheet file to a CUESHEET tag in the APE file and I have a single file that I can archive, play, or transcode. It works really well so far.

I'm surprised that WavPack hasn't got a mention... It's compression is usually better than FLAC (so I've found anyway) and it's an extremely fast encoder/decoder. It's seeking isn't very good but that doesn't bother you as it's only for archiving. I think you should take a look...

I have a problem very similar to MestreLion, and I have one additional question: when I rip the CDs, I'm going to make sure the flac/ape/? files are tagged correctly. Then I'm going to want to transencode to MP3 or ogg, and I want to make sure the tags make their way fully and correctly to the new files... what's the best lossless compression format for tag compatibility and ease of transencoding?

you can use MAREO to encode to two formats at once

* for setting up EAC

Lossless additions here:

Wavepack Hybrid:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/show.php/showtopic/14879

Flac:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/show.php/showtopic/14880


MOD: * no links or names of ripping groups please.

I rip to FLAC. I tag and replaygain the FLAC files, then burn them to DVD. After that is done, I can easily transcode directly from the DVD to pretty much any lossy format I want, over and over again.

I use MAC as the program to catalog the DVD's.

Currently I'm using Frontah as the fonrtend to the MPC, Ogg, and MP3 encoders.

Ouch! - Poor DVD-drive. It´s running, and running and running while the transcoding-programm is doing its job. I do it very similar. But with one small difference: When I want to transcode some of the DVD´s with my lossless files to , let´s say, MP3 --aps, I first copy the whole disc to my hard-drive. It takes only 7 or 8 minutes to copy a DVD to HD. And it´s way better for the drive than to let it run for a few hours without any pause just for reading from time to time some infos from the DVD.

Wavpack to the lossy/lossless format of my choice, transcoded through foobar. IDv1 and APE 2 Tags are preserved/transferred, no worries.

If you store the Wavpack files in hybrid mode, and only have the lossy portion readily available, these also transcode very well. We just need to wait for Wavpack4 to be finished so we can get foobar support, etc. The Wavpack4 alpha is quite nice already, but no direct foobar support, yet...