I hope the player NEVER supports MP3Pro. And I hope other devices don't either. Send a message to Thompson and Fraunhoffer about MP3Pro: Eet's Crrrap! Not to be confused with PLUS of course.

What we need is people concentrating on higher density devices to store more data and transfer it faster. If someone thinks they need MP3Pro, then they should likely be using some small flash-media device.

It makes much more sense to throw another hard drive into the empeg than to spend time encoding (or RE-encoding) to MP3Pro.

WMA I would like to see, even though I won't use it for my own ripped music.

If you want to put up with lower quality (it probably won't get audibly any worse than it is now), then use TOTAL RECORDER to capture the decoded audio stream while playing the MP3Pro Tracks. Then encode them with a good MP3 encoder like LAME, at a suitable bit rate (it must be higher that whatever you had your Pro files in. Higher than 128 to be safe and if going by Pro's quality claims).

HDs are relatively cheap. If you're serious about long-term MP3 usage and you don't want to re-rip, make archival quality MP3 files from the start. And keep them. At least you then have base files to play with when putting music onto other devices. The greater loss from re-encoding won't be much of an issue on a small portable with headphones for instance.

Bruno