[gbrunsdon]

Hi: I'd really appreciate some advice on this as I'm looking to achive the best audio quality on my new Cowon D2+ Player.

A lot of my CD's were burnt from downloaded MP3 files using Nero or similar. I'd now like to rip them back to a digital file to use on my Cowon.

My plan for my 'shop bought' CD's is to convert them to Flac.

But - wondered what format to use for my Mp3 cds... Mp'3 or Flac?

What would be the best quality? would I gain anything by using Flac?

[Steven]

You can use both. Even if you decide against Flac due to file size, compatibility or whatever else; it is still useful to have for archival purposes and you can always return to it to convert to whatever format you wish and thus avoid have to repeatedly re-rip CDs

http://www.avforums.com/forums/porta...on-thread.html

Short answer is you will gain more with flac but it depends on the equipment you have. If say it was just a bog standard car stereo you was using then I am not sure it is worth the bother

[spl23]

If you rip to MP3 again, then you will effectively have applied lossy compression twice to each track, which is a bad idea. The fact that the music was originally in MP3 does not mean it can be converted to WAV and then back to MP3 again with no additional quality loss.

If you rip to FLAC, you will have the same quality as the original MP3s - no better, but no worse. If you rip to MP3, you will have reduced the quality over the original MP3s. In your position, I'd stick with FLAC if that's what you're using for the rest of your collection anyway.

(Actually, I *was* in exactly your position a couple of years ago - I had a bunch of MP3-sourced music on audio CDs and I wanted to put it on my server. I ended up spending a few weeks scouring the web for the original MP3s I'd used, and nowadays if I find something as MP3, I keep a copy of the original MP3 file as well as any audio CD versions.)

[gbrunsdon]

Thanks for all the advice. I'll make sure I keep all my original Mp'3 in future...