all about pc and audio thoughts ...

I use Windows Media Player (standard with Windows) to lossless .wav. .wav is the format most like what is used for CDs. Results are top notch. Automatic metadata tagging (album, artist names, cover art, etc.) works well mostly though classical CDs are hit or miss and require some manual tagging say 50% of the time or so.

You will need a different program to rip FLAC files. WMP does not support FLAC. FLAC is more flexible for editing tags. I prefer to get tags right initially prior to rip to .wav using WMP and not have to revisit that later.

Jplay is a plugin for use in iTunes, Foobar and J.River that loads up the track in RAM, and plays back from there. The hard drive is never touched during playback. Jplay supports playback using Kernel streaming and WASAPI, has several settings to optimize memory management, like the size of the buffer, how much to commit your processor, etc. It's a little quirky in iTunes, but this little program took the sound quality of my PC audio to a new height using iTunes. Stock iTunes will not output sound using WASAPI or Kernel streaming, but Jplay enables this, so if you like the iTunes interface, this could be an answer for you.
To my knowledge, J.River and Foobar both support WASAPI, and maybe Kernel streaming, but I don't think either of these play back the music from RAM. Jplay does this. Improvements made by Jplay in iTunes were astounding, Jplay improvements to be made in J River or Foobar will be less so.
To rip CDs, lots of folks use EAC, which is free, but doesn't support AIFF or Apple Lossless. Also dBpoweramp is widely recommended here. Have not tried dBpoweramp, but EAC was frustrating because its integration with iTunes isn't there. Also had some problems with automatic tagging.

Hi Bolero32,

Here's some helpful info: http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/309-computer-audiophile-cd-ripping-strategy-and-methodology/comments3.html

how does the JPlay plug-in interface w/compare w MediaMonkey.