Do I need to re-rip?

If it were my choice I would re rip everything. The reason is that iTunes is probably not the best ripping software you can use. You would be converting files that were ripped under less than ideal circumstances. I would do new rips directly to WAV with EAC or dbPoweramp. Why take a chance?

As far as converting from one format to another goes, I'm not sure if that will degrade SQ. I'll venture to say that, as with ripping, you'll definitely want to use the best software for the job and have it set up properly. But I really don't know for sure.

Zd is right. If you ripped everything with iTunes, then you should re-rip everything regardless of the format it was ripped to. If you are on Mac, use XLD. If PC, then use dbpoweramp.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

From my experience, comparing sound quality from CD's ripped in WAV versus these ripped in FLAC and then converted into WAV - I would stongly advise you to re-rip your CD collection in WAV. Don;t forget to use quality ripping software and...and then optimize it as well.

All The Best

Simon
Musica Pristina

Thanks for the advice. Guess I need to set aside some time to re-rip. Will use dbpoweramp and save as WAV. Is dbpoweramp free? And will dbpoweramp automatically download album art and tags or will I have to type in info?

I would suggest re-ripping some CDs that you know well and compare them to files that are converted. If you cannot tell any difference, then re-ripping may not be necessary.

There is a free version of dBpoweramp.It will find the tags, but you have to be careful. WAV files do not normally have tags, so unless you use WAV extensions, the tags will not be saved in the file. What player are you going to use?

The dBpoweramp batch converter can be set up to convert all the files automatically.

Next step would be to get dBpoweramp and do some experimenting.