shadowtroop wrote:all 5 of the computers I've used have suffered a harddrive crash or had files erased by a virus.
OK, I can see that it's a good idea to use a Linux computer to manage your music files, even though your portable music player is part of the iTunes family.
shadowtroop wrote:I want (lossless, not AAC) m4a because I'm storing this all on my iPod Touch.
It's hard to know exactly what you mean here, but if you mean that your iPod is considered the "main" archive storage device, this is against conventional wisdom. Portable music players, by their very nature, are at risk of drop-damage and being stolen.
Conventional wisdom is to store all your music files on a
reliable desktop computer (Puppy Linux certainly qualifies) and maybe even do a mirrored backup to an external hard-drive or network-attached storage.
Then convert all of these "master" music files to a compressed format to transfer to your portable player. This is for convenience, not quality, since you maximise the storage capacity of your portable device this way. AAC is the codec of choice with an iPod, and it's certainly better than MP3. The storage capacity
handicap you will suffer by storing ALAC files on your portable player isn't worth the trouble; I doubt you will hear the difference.
Contrary to what Apple fanboys may have you believe, the iPod is not an audiophile device ... unless you go all-out and modify the iPod's D/A converter circuitry, as offered by Red Wine Audio ($250)
http://redwineaudio.com/imod
or buy the Wadia iPod transport interface ($380)
http://www.wadia.com/products/transports/170i/
As to what format to store your original music files on the Puppy system; acquire the best lossless-compression music files available at the time, either FLAC, ALAC, Monkey's Audio, or WavPack. And just keep them as you acquired them. There's no need to transcode these original files ... unless you're using iTunes!
Eventually some manufacturer will come up with a better portable player, and a better codec for small size. Then you just recompress afresh, from the original files.