I have been at this digital music thing for several years now, and have managed to compile 2000+ CDs/albums in 320 MP3 format. Untill recently I have been happy with the results being played on my livingroom WAF system running on an IBM laptop > Pioneer SX 980 > Bose 901 series III. (OK... so I lost half the crowd right there) VERY basic setup! It was fine for dinner parties. :boring:

Then my affliction progressed as it has with so many of us, and better speakers started finding their way into my basement, shop and office! :thmbsp:

JBL L100s, DLK3s, HPM100s, Genesis 410s, and then a couple of months ago a pair of JBL L100t3s! THAT DID IT! :yes:

I started hearing what the MP3s were leaving behind! I need to start all over and go to FLAC and do as much as I can to get the sound as close to CD quality as possible, considering that I am working with all vintage Pioneer, Marantz, and Sansui receivers. No digital inputs here at this point. :no:

The way I see it is there are two issues to tackle. First is the long term project of replacing my MP3s with quality FLAC files. I understand that once you have lost the data on a MP3 you cannot recover it, so I am gearing up to rip my files all over again. I set up EAC and got it running, but have a couple of questions. I have it grabbing the metadata that I want except for album art. How can I get that from the gitgo too? Another question is, is there any reason to not use the maximum compression setting of 8?

The second main issue is how the best way to play the files back bypassing what seems to be well known BAD windows software for passing music. I have read that FOOBAR 2000 has a way to get around the windows stuff, and I have put that in place, but have not found how to set it up to bypass the unwanted code. Any pointers? Or is there a better package for playback available?

Thirdly, (did I say there were two issues? :scratch2:) I want to be able to use a USB output from a couple of laptops into 3 or 4 different receivers around the house at any given time, and was looking at a Blue Circle "Thingee" to give me a decent DAC to RCA outputs to analog inputs to my receivers. Am I on the right track here?

Whew......this got long. Sorry folks, but so many questions! What are my options on a shoestring budget?

Am I on the right track here? I think you are on the right track and I'm going through a very similar process. (http://audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?p=2294722#post22947223.) But my goal is to have better sound quality then my current CD/SACD player and the DAC is the key item for that. I'm using iTunes so I can't help you with the digital part other that EAC appears to be the way to go (that's what I'm going to use) and many are using Fubar. I think for very little money you can get an Entech DAC from eBay that might give you more flexibility. If you were using iTunes you could use an Airport Express to capture audio at any location in your home. I don't think it will work outside of iTunes though.