Re-ripping music collection to new iMac

I did both, and did not notice any difference with the re-ripped tracks vs. the converted (to AppleLossLess) tracks.

convert them first, then re-rip a few and compare them.

good luck

Depends on your system,you may not be able to tell the difference. I don't know about WMP but ripping to a aiff file will include metadata that wav will not. Hard drive space is so cheap there is no reason to compress your files. If it gets cheap enough we may find a way to end those damn MP3's. I say get the mac, load it up, and for now on rip aiff files.

My hardcopy CDs are, in most cases, copies themselves that I burned from public libraries, friends CDs, etc.

You do realize that this is a blatant copyright infringement? Not sure why you'd want to share that information publicly.

As far as whether to re-rip; It depends what resolution you ripped them at in the first place, and how discriminating you are about the differences in formats. You do not want rez-up a file, so if you ripped them at low-rez and you want high-rez then re-rip the files from the originals. If you want quality audio you should choose a lossless format such as Apple Lossless right from the start. If the files were ripped in low-rez you will gain no additional quality by converting them to a higher rez format IMHO and you may even introduce some distortions. I don't know the Nero Burn sofware, but if the CD's are indeed direct copies of the original CD's then you can re-rip from the copies. If Nero Burn compresses the files, then you will have to rip from the originals to get the best quality. I don't think EAC is compatible with Mac - at least, last time I checked there was no Mac version of that software (PC only). I'm not sure if EAC files are cross platform(?).

Thanks for the input so far. It is sounding to me like it would be a waste of time to re-rip. The new iMac and Cavalry 2TB HD unit are both on the way so I'll follow the advice and just load it up - try out a couple of re-rips and compare. The CDs were ripped originally in a WAV format (not compressed) so there probably wouldn't be any advantage to re-ripping. You have confirmed my suspicions.

FLAC.....google it!
Winamp handles it natively...and it makes files about 45% reduced from the WAV and can be turned back into a bit-perfect copy.