I ripped some CDs a little while back to AAC format (using foobar2000 + Nero AAC). I'm now veering towards using WMP 11 as my default media player (don't want a discussion on that choice; I've looked at the alternatives), and have found appropriate plugins to get AAC to play in WMP and show up in the library (Orban for AAC playback and WMP Tag Support Extender to get them to show up at all in WMP).

But, I would appreciate anyone's experience on the following (particularly 2 and 3):

(1) The tags which foobar2000 put into my AAC files don't show up properly in WMP... some do, some don't. So the WMP library incomplete, and inaccurate. Any idea why? I have been through and found album information for them all (using the automatic lookup in WMP) but am perplexed as to why this happened in the first place, and whether anybody has a workaround.

(2) Is there any way to get WMP to rip directly to AAC (using Nero AAC preferably)? I can't see a way of specifying an external encoder, but maybe there's a plugin that will enable this to be done? I rather like WMP's ability to look up album information and place it directly in the WMP library, and the information is quite complete and accurate (better than freedb which I was using with foobar).

(3) If AAC does not play well generally with WMP, I'm considering one of the WMA varieties. WMA Pro looks like it would be the best choice from a quality point of view, but it doesn't seem well supported generally. Any thoughts as to whether ripping to WMA Pro would be a BAD THING? Would it be like choosing betamax over VHS?

Thanks,

Mike