CD ripping

C Dripping.

flac 0 through flac 8 (I think that is the highest) are lossless, compressed formats. dBpoweramp also provides Uncompressed flac, which is not compressed at all. It is basically a wav file with a flac header. If anyone is concerned about flac compression, uncompressed flac is a good option since it has the metadata capability that wav lacks. There are versions of wav with metadata, but they seem to be pretty nonstandard. I think most players play uncompressed flac.

If the m4a files are lossless, then I would suggest converting a couple to uncompressed flac, flac 5, wav or one of the Apple formats and comparing them to see if you hear a difference. Then re-rip the same album to your preferred format and see if you hear a difference. It is easier to do the experiment than to re-rip everything. You can also re-rip at a later time.

If your m4a are lossy, then definitely consider re-ripping.

Obviously, take your time upfront, before launching a time consuming process.

Thanks everyone, great responses!  
 
Guess I need to do some ab tests and work out what to do.

I'm minded to re rip my collection, back up and get rid of all the CDs.  But will test first.

dbpoweramp can help guarantee 100% accurate rip if possible.

Poor quality or dirty CDs will result in taking longer to rip but if accurate rip is on the results will be the same each time.

It should not matter in the end for rip quality (as opposed to possibly playing live) but you could rip before and then after treatment to see if CD rips faster or not. If treatment helps rip will occur faster. If not the same. Or possibly longer if it actually hurts.

But you would know for sure if you care.

Accurate rip can be turned on or off to enable rips of defective CDs if needed.

No need to re-rip probably if the lossless variant of the format has been used and the format works for all your devices needed.