Just recently, I've become so spoiled by the sound of flac... I can no longer tolerate the sound of my lossy Mp3's. I've become as finicky as Morris the cat. So now, I must go through the process of ripping all my music files to flac. It seems like a lot to do, but I think its worth it. The pros are quite substantial.

• Flac files sound identical to compact disc
• Flac format is non proprietary
• Flac is natively supported by many popular players, including Winamp

Cons? Only one... Flac is larger. While the average disc ripped to mp3 at 320 Kbps would be between 80 and 120 mb, the average for Flac is about 280 to 400 mb, but thats no big deal with the volume and cheapness of drives these days. I started ripping flac with Sound-Juicer in Linux and with Winamp in Vista, but I moved to a better program called EAC (Exact Audio Copy). This is a very good ripper which produces a perfect rip every time. It also generates a report on peaks and the accuracy of the rip. All too often, Winamp or sound-juicer failed to rip without errors here and there... that never happens with EAC. So thats it... My mp3 collection has become an intolerable artifact and now I must replace it all with flac.