As a short after-thought to my last post, fortunately I may be wrong regarding having to uncompress lossless audio files before playing them. Two useful links are as follows: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossless_data_compression http://www.bobulous.org.uk/misc/audioFormats.html The second one is useful as there is comparison between lossless and lossy formats, the lossy ones including MP3 and Ogg Vorbis. It would seem to me that given the unbelievably low price of hard disks these days, lossless formats can be used if you are a perfectionist, and the FLAC format does seem to be 'free' or open source, or whatever. I've never given thought to how one manages hard disk based storage over time as these do give out eventually. Constant backing up to more than one HD or other media I guess is what you have to do. From Ray I can be contacted off-list at: mailto:ray-48@xxxxxxxx ** To leave the list, click on the immediately-following link:- ** [mailto:access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe] ** If this link doesn't work then send a message to: ** access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ** and in the Subject line type ** unsubscribe ** For other list commands such as vacation mode, click on the ** immediately-following link:- ** [mailto:access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faq] ** or send a message, to ** access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the Subject:- faq