As I type this I'm importing my mp3 files directly into iTunes and converting my lossless files to WMA Lossless (which will then be imported and turned into ALE).
I hate to leave winamp, but there are a few key features it doesn't have, and with it being killed by AOL and all, I see no choice but to move to something else. Unfortunatly I'm on windows, so I can't customize iTunes as much as I like through scripts (cause there aren't many for iTunes for windows).
I want to learn more about the inner workings of iTunes, especially Sound Check. Since Sound Check can be disabled, and is lossless (so I've been told), I have it enabled now(why not), so it's scanning my music as it is imported. Sound Check has its advantages, mainly that all files, no matter the filetype, will be treated equally. I hated how in winamp you had to configure the ReplayGain individually for each input plugin. For flac and ogg I could change the level on the fly with the plugin, but for mp3s I had to actually rescan them in mp3Gain. I couldn't find a way to level the few hundred m4a aac files I had downloaded. So it's good that Sound Check will at least work on all the files it can play.
On the other hand, SoundCheck doesn't offer much customizability, which is why I'm looking for an alternative. What I want to do is use an external program to scan ALL my m4a aac, m4a lossless, and mp3 files on an album level basis, and write SoundCheck tags, which iTunes would then use. It wouldn't be totally seamless, because anything I import into iTunes will be scanned per track, and I'll have to use the external program to correct this, but it's still easier than what I was doing in winamp. Does anyone know of such a program? Is this legally possible with ALE, since it's not an open source format. Oh, is there much chance of a winamp plugin being developed to read ALE, cause I like winamp for it's visualizations and am keeping it around for that, and for previewing things I download before adding them to iTunes.

Thanks,
Keith D

Let me suggest Foobar2000.

Tried that with the default settings on my mp3s and it f***ed them up, corrupted the tags somehow. That was awhile ago though, I'll redownload foobar and learn how to configure it, and try again. Thanks for the reminder.

Doubt it corrupted the tags, but it probably did add ape2 tags.

Stay with iTunes

Foobar2000 is more like a tool, not a music library. And you'll always have to configure and reconfigure it to make it work like you want.

Foobar2000 works well and its replaygain feature is superior to iTunes SoundCheck feature. However, I personally have no use for replaygain as I gave an iPod and primarily use iTunes for my music listening. SoundCheck has its flaws, such as making short (under 1 min.) songs louder than others and the tendency to make acoustic guitar songs a lot louder than other songs, but it does its purpose the majority of the time.

foobar w/ foo_pod can replace the inaccurate soundcheck numbers with replaygain values on the ipod, thus allowing you to use replaygain instead.