I have been ripping my cds to date to wavpack using EAC and playing via Foobar. I create a cue sheet for each disc with gap detection set to method "a" and "secure". I'm making a change to better integrate my music into my home theater: i.e. softmodded a xbox and loaded XBMC to which I plan to stream my music on hard drive through my wireless network. Question is: I was considering converting to flac just b/c the format seems better supported although I know xbmc can apparently handle wavpack. Wanted to get some opinions and whether converting from wavpack to flac via foobar (flac, level 5 on the convert dialog box) is equivalent to creating a flac file from the original wav file using EAC. Also as to whether the cue sheets as I am creating them are useful...

Converting from wavpack to flac via foobar is the same as if you had ripped the disc to flac in the first place with EAC, yes.

If you've ripped your tracks to individual files, don't plan on burning a backup copy back to CD that includes index information or changing the placement of your gaps, and you don't wish to check your rips against the AccurateRip database with a third-party checker such as CUETools, your cue sheets are dispensable.

cool, thanks. btw, what is the significance of the flac, level 5 designation? that's what gave me pause as to whether the foobar conversion from wavpack to flac would be the same as the eac conversion from the original wav files...

-5 is just a compression setting. Lossless = lossless, so the only other variables of relevance (aside from software/hardware support) are the degree of compression vs. encode/decode time. Generally, the greater the compression the slower the encode/decode time.

See: http://www.icer.nl/losslesstest/

C.

edit: added stuff in brackets

Lossless =Lossless as long as there are no hardware errors and they happen, even on a perfectly stable machines.
I suggest to avoid unnecessary recompression. Or to verify that it was correct.
FLAC has -V switch which seems to do this (though description is so brief, that I'm not 100% sure).

-V does a parallel verification which is not a robust as a sequential (is that the right term?) verification.

If the wavpack files were created to include a md5 checksums, you can compare them with those that flac generates by default. Combine this with a test of your flac files after they were created and you're assured that the process was lossless.

Is this overly-paranoid? Perhaps.