I have rippede all of my CD's using WMP via XP. The only problem I have had with the empeg decoding this was when i set the bit rate above 190ish. I was getting many artifacts (skipping, pops) and thought there was something wrong with the HU, but when I played this bit reate on my portable player (Compaq) there was no problem. I re-ripped the cd at 128 and there was absolutely no problem with the playback. As your friend, its just too easy to encode as a WMA file to need to change to MP3. Plus, on your hard drive, WMP places as the Icon the cd cover!

Ed