B-day gift to myself and encoding question..

[hbar98]

Hey all-

I purchased a Fuze as a b-day gift to myself, and so far it is great! It replaced the aging (and slowly dying) Creative ZEN Micro.

Now, I'm not one to say that I'm an audiophile, but I can tell a marked improvement in sound quality with the Fuze over the ZEN Micro. It may also be due to the Creative EP-630 earbuds I got with my Dell XPS, but the thing is, I'm hearing things in songs that I've never heard before.

Fer'instance, at the end of Hell by SNZ, somebody says, "I broke the chandelier"...I've never heard that before! Even with the Zen Micro and the Creative earbuds.

But this also means I'm hearing artifacts in the ripping/encoding that I've either never heard before, or it has exacerbated the ones I have noticed.

Since the last time I ripped my CDs was ages ago, what's a good codec/program to use now? I think the last time I ripped them it was a mix between VBR MP3s and lossless WMA.

Thank you for your help, and have a great day!

(edit: speeling chezk)