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If you want to hear every detail in your music--every breath, every strum, every rattle--lossless music formats are the only way to go. But if you hate the idea of your precious music files being tied up in some corporation's proprietary format (i.e. Apple Lossless and Windows Media Audio Lossless), the most popular choice out there is FLAC.

The Iriver SPINN can deliver a pocket full of pristine, lossless music encoded in the open-source FLAC format.

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CBS Interactive)

You can find free programs for Mac, Windows, and Linux that will play and rip FLAC files, but finding a FLAC-compatible MP3 player isn't quite as easy.

I've rounded-up my favorite FLAC-compatible players into two groups: MP3 players with FLAC and Portable Video Players with FLAC. The distinction is really just a formality to keep our comparison charts from busting apart, so definitely give both roundups a look.

It's also worth mentioning that if you own an older iPod and you don't mind tinkering with it, the open-source Rockbox firmware lets you add FLAC audio playback, custom EQ, games, and tons of little surprises.

Have some wisdom to share on why you think people should make the switch to FLAC? Share your experience in the comments section.

Click to see the Cowon O2 photo gallery.

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

Our official rated review for the Cowon O2 portable video player is now up on CNET Reviews, along with a full photo gallery and a First Look video.

We've been putting the O2 through its paces all week and it's held up remarkably well. It's still not the sexiest piece of tech we've laid eyes on, but it's got more muscle than any other portable video player in its price range.

Audio enthusiasts will also want to give the O2 a look, considering it supports desirable lossless music formats such as FLAC, Apple Lossless, and WMA Lossless, and offers a killer 10-band graphic EQ.

In spite of some great features, however, there are a few omissions on the O2 that could be deal-breakers for some users.

Read the full review for the Cowon O2 portable video player.

Video fanatics rejoice! The Cowon O2 is powerful, flexible, and surprisingly affordable.

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

It hasn't been a terribly exciting year for portable video players. Despite its relatively small screen, the iPod Touch is one of the few PVPs we've been giving an unqualified recommendation for in 2008. The Archos 5 is ambitious, but the battery life just isn't there; the Q5W is overpriced and bulky; and the A3 left us feeling kinda "meh." Thankfully, the Cowon O2 looks like it's going to close-out our year of PVP reviews on an upnote.

First off, let me mention the official U.S. MSRP for the O2, because I know there have been a few guesstimates floating around. The Cowon O2 will retail for $219 (8GB), $249 (16GB), and $299 (32GB), which you can pick up in either black or white. If 32GB isn't enough storage for you, keep in mind that the O2 includes a SDHC card slot for quickly swapping out content and increasing storage as you need it.

The second thing to notice about the O2 is its stupefying amount of file support. On the video end the O2 can play back AVI, WMV, ASF, MP4, MKV, OGM, DAT, MTV, DivX, XviD, MPEG-4, WMV 9/8/7, H.264, M-JPEG, and MPEG 1. The O2 is also agnostic when it comes to video resolution, accepting files all the way up to 1,280x720 at 30fps. For me, native format and resolution support is huge deal, because my home media collection is all over the place and few things test my patience more than re-encoding batches of video files.

Another huge deal for me is battery life, and Cowon is claiming that the O2 will get up to 8 hours of video playback (under "optimal" conditions) before surrendering. If Cowon's right, 8 hours of video playback would put the O2 far beyond the 4 hours of video life on the Archos 5, and ahead of the 6 hours of video on the iPod Touch and even the iPod Classic. Audio battery life isn't as impressive, with only 18 hours, but it's still ahead of the 12 hours of playback time on the Archos 5. Another thing to bear in mind is that all of the O2's competitors require a proprietary cable to recharge the battery, which can be a huge pain if you lose the cable while traveling. The O2 charges best when using the included AC adapter, but you can charge over its mini-USB connection, as well.

The 160GB iPod Classic is the king of lossless audio MP3 players, but there are rivals.

(Credit: CNET Networks/Corinne Schulze)

With the increased capacity of today's computer hard drives and MP3 players, ripping your CDs to a large, lossless audio format such as FLAC or Apple Lossless isn't such a crazy idea. In fact, some folks are convinced that lossless audio is the wave of the future.

While I personally have a handful of my favorite albums ripped to lossless files on my computer, I'm a little skeptical of the idea of a lossless revolution taking root. For better or worse, the MP3's popularity will likely remain unshaken for many years to come, for a variety of reasons.

That said, anything's possible, and there's a good chance you already own an MP3 player that supports at least one lossless audio format. If the idea of being unprepared of the bloody overthrow of the MP3 by lossless loyalists makes you feel uneasy, however, then here's a quick roundup of some of our favorite lossless MP3 players.

Check out lossless MP3 players

Sure, it looks like everybody's doing it, but you've never downloaded music. I understand, downloads, be they iTunes or MP3s, even some of the DRM-free varieties sound awful and you're an audiophile, or just really care about sound quality. Downloads are "good enough" for most folks, but they're not good enough for you.

Enter HDtracks, a sound quality oriented download "store," where you can get 100 percent uncompressed, DRM-free, bona-fide CD quality downloads and burn them to CD. HDtracks also supplies each CD's full liner notes and cover art as a PDF.

I wrote about HDtracks before, but now that they're offering a free eight song sampler you don't have plunk down any dough to find out if their UNcompressed AIFF files, lossless FLAC files, or even 320kbps MP3 downloads would work for you. Burn the FLAC files to CD and play 'em in your car, or the boombox, or if you're hard-core, over your hi-fi. If you're so inclined you can put the music on your iPod as well.

I had a problem. Years ago, I bought Microsoft's now-discontinued Digital Media Plus Pack for converting my LP records into digital files. Because it's a Microsoft product from back in the day when Microsoft was gung-ho about Windows Media, it only rips to Windows Media Audio. And of course, it's Windows only. (Other than that, it's a great tool--very easy to use, never messes up line leveling, and has a good algorithm for removing pops and scratches.)

Back when I used iTunes and my iPod exclusively, I'd simply rip the album into WMA, then import the folder from MyMusic into iTunes. It would ask me if I wanted to convert to AAC (the default--it can also convert to MP3), I'd accept, then delete the WMAs so as not to clutter my hard drive with duplicates.

dBpoweramp lets you convert just about any audio file format to any other.

(Credit: Screenshot)

But since 2006, I've been using a Zune (review unit) as my primary music player. Zune plays both AAC and WMA files, and it automatically reads your iTunes library. I got lazy and stopped converting my vinyl from WMA to AAC.

Now I've got a Shuffle. And a library full of WMA files that it can't play. Of course, I could do what I used to do--import the folders from My Music into iTunes, convert to AAC, then delete the originals. But what if I want to convert those WMAs into MP3s to make sure they can play on any device with any software app? OK, I guess I could change the default on iTunes. But what happens when you add a bunch of downloaded FLAC files into the mix? Or Ogg files? What about converting AAC back to WMA--I can't see any reason why I'd want to do that today, but who knows where Microsoft and Apple are heading with their file format support?

I needed to future-proof my music collection, while still maintaining the best quality-to-size ratio possible. (MP3 is one of the lossiest formats.)

dBpoweramp Music Converter is the solution. $18 for the regular edition. (The $28 reference edition has features for professionals and more serious amateurs.) You can download just about any imaginable codec from the associated Web site. By default it performs file conversion within the same folder as the original files, so you can easily keep track of what's where. (Not like iTunes, which moves every converted file into the iTunes library by default.) Or, if you want to export directly to an iTunes folder, it can do that. It even adds a feature to the Windows Explorer so when you hover over a file, it'll display full ID3 tag information for that file--useful for changing mysterious file names to match song titles.

Highly recommended.

dBpoweramp shows ID3 tags within Windows Explorer. So you can find out the real title of that Track 4.WMA file you've been carrying around..

(Credit: Screenshot)

The Cowon iAudio 7--same great looks as the iAudio 6, now with Flash memory and an incredibly long battery life.

(Credit: Cowon America, Inc.)

One of our favorite MP3 players is getting an upgrade. Cowon announced the iAudio 7 today in Korea, updating their micro-drive iAudio 6 player to a lighter, leaner flash-based player. The update includes a significant jump in battery life, from 20 hours to a remarkable 60 hours. The iAudio 6 supports standard audio formats such as MP3, AAC, WMA, ASF, WAV, and even beloved (yet rarely supported) formats such as OGG and FLAC. It looks as though many of the great features of its predecessor have been maintained, including line-in recording, voice recording, video playback, BBE sound enhancer, and its unique touch-scroll interface.

Korea will see the player mid-July, unveiled in 4GB and 8GB capacities, and priced at $182 and $246, respectively. No word on whether this will ever reach the U.S., however.

(via AkihabaraNews)