I have at length listened to files ripped in WAV, FLAC, AIFF and if you want to hear the best audio performance then you need to use WAV. I have also asked a number of the top audio companies (and their designers) making the best music servers and they all say, use WAV if you want to achieve the best audio performance. Noise from a number of sources is a big problem in digital audio. The lower you can reduce this noise or reduce its effects the better audio performance you will get. A number of companies are separating out the computer functions, so you have a computer optimised for the server function and another computer optimised for the player function. Some companies have even separated these two functions into separate cases, each with their own power supplies and heavy shielding. This is only necessary if you are trying to get the ultimate performance from your stored music. Yes, mathematically lossless compression is supposed to be "lossless", but audibly the lossless files are not as good sonically as the WAV files. I have WAV files and lossless files (same album) and even in my cars you can easily tell the WAV files give the superior audio performance.