I have to take issue with one of Ckrody's comments above. AIFF handles metadata tags quite nicely. WAV does not.
And while lossless formats, such as Apple Lossless, return bit-perfect files, there is a growing number of people who believe the conversion back to uncompressed data streams can cause some sonic degradation, depending on how your computer audio system is set up, the speed of your processor, and so forth. I haven't been able to confirm this myself, but I decided to rip my CDs in AIFF just to be safe. In any case, converting from Lossless to AIFF is something you can do very easily from within iTunes.
I remain unconvinced that EAC offers any meaningful benefits over iTunes for ripping. Some people think it does, but it's hard to see how. Error correction in iTunes works sufficiently well that it's really the least of your worries when it comes to the sound quality of a computer audio system. How you get it out of the computer and how that process eventually talks to the DAC is where the action is.
And while lossless formats, such as Apple Lossless, return bit-perfect files, there is a growing number of people who believe the conversion back to uncompressed data streams can cause some sonic degradation, depending on how your computer audio system is set up, the speed of your processor, and so forth. I haven't been able to confirm this myself, but I decided to rip my CDs in AIFF just to be safe. In any case, converting from Lossless to AIFF is something you can do very easily from within iTunes.
I remain unconvinced that EAC offers any meaningful benefits over iTunes for ripping. Some people think it does, but it's hard to see how. Error correction in iTunes works sufficiently well that it's really the least of your worries when it comes to the sound quality of a computer audio system. How you get it out of the computer and how that process eventually talks to the DAC is where the action is.