I would recommend staying away from Apple lossless and going with a more universal (and less proprietary) lossless format, FLAC or APE. WinAmp has free plugins available that will play these formats natively.
You can also playback thru your main system by using something like the LinkSys Wireless MusicBirdge. I snagged one for $55 delivered and I really enjoy the freedom of having a huge music library available at my fingertips. I run it from my laptop and send the music that's saved on my external USB drive connected to my server out to my main hi-fi.
dbPowerAmp and Exact Audio copy are very good ripping programs and both are available free, Google 'em.
In addition, most of the downloadable, free music comes in FLAC or SHN format - see
[url]http://db.etree.org[/url]
[url]http://www.archive.org/details/etree[/url]
(I don't know why both these link *look* the same in this post, they go to different sites)
It's the Golden Age for free music right now, jump on the bandwagon, mate!
-RW-
You can also playback thru your main system by using something like the LinkSys Wireless MusicBirdge. I snagged one for $55 delivered and I really enjoy the freedom of having a huge music library available at my fingertips. I run it from my laptop and send the music that's saved on my external USB drive connected to my server out to my main hi-fi.
dbPowerAmp and Exact Audio copy are very good ripping programs and both are available free, Google 'em.
In addition, most of the downloadable, free music comes in FLAC or SHN format - see
[url]http://db.etree.org[/url]
[url]http://www.archive.org/details/etree[/url]
(I don't know why both these link *look* the same in this post, they go to different sites)
It's the Golden Age for free music right now, jump on the bandwagon, mate!
-RW-