Hi guys,
Just been to HA for a while browsing their forum.
Here's what I could find.
Lossy
Ogg still has an edge over LAME, MusePack and WMA.
They are now advising Ogg Vorbis AoTuV 4.51 or alternatively LAME 3.97b2.
Lossless
Wavepack has recently step forward to the 1st place over FLAC and the rest of the pack by a short margin.
Be sure you use Wavpack 4.3 or FLAC 1.1.2
Rippers
Yep, good old EAC is still the leader with not much opposition.
EAC is currently on version 0.95b3 with cdrdao inside.
If you don't like EAC then by all means don't use anything less then CDex.
You should always use EAC to rip your audio and make a Wavpack extraction on the fly.
Since Wavpack is lossless it is the exact same thing as having a wave file.
Later on use oggdropXPdV1.8.6-aoTuVb4.51 which is a GUI for Ogg to compress your Wavpack files.
Alternatively use lamedropXPd2V-3.97b2 if your hardware player don't support Ogg decoding.
Oh, here's a wonderfull guide for EAC newbies
http://users.fulladsl.be/spb2267/.
Cheers