With storage being so cheap and music at top quality taking so little bandwidth anyway, I don't see the point in trying to be efficient. It takes all of 10 min to rip a full CD in full FLAC glory with EAC.I much rather have the lossless version that I can re-encode as I please if there was ever a need. Similar to diamonds, most people can't tell apart a great one from a good one, but if you were relatively rich and could easily afford the great one, why settle?