Sick of iTunes low quality music

[Bremen]

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I use Exact Audio Copy and FLAC to rip in lossless format. I don't know if the iPod will play FLAC though.

I wouldn't say that lossless is *much* better than a good MP3 rip, but it is better and I have enough disk space that I don't care that the files take up 5 times as much space.

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Using a good ripping program is more important than the file format that is ultimately used. Something like EAC or cdparanoia (I use grip for the frontend) will ensure you don't have audio distortions in the finished file. I also encode in flac since I have a large classical collection however I probably wouldn't recognize the difference between a flac file and a high quality ogg.