As I understand the Beosound 5 records flawlessly which results in a very large file for a typical CD but wqith a 500Gb disk drive does not worry too much.  However the Beosound 6 works well at 192kbps.

I am unsure whether I can transfer between the two systems without filling up the beosound 6 too quickly? If I put flawless CD's on the beosound 6 then you only seem to get a few on there.  I do not want to have to reciord each CD in two formats depending upon how I use them

Your help would be appreciated. Rob

If you are happy with the sound of 192kbps, then you can encode your music at this rate and you only need one copy of the music.  This is where I  started with my BeoPort, BS2 and BS3.  When I really wanted to hear the best audio, I'd listen to the CD.  As I've grown to use my BeoPort more  (and my CDs less - it's a matter of convenience - my CDs are poorly organized), I've moved more of my music to lossless.

I first encode at 256kbps (MP3) and if I don't like the sound on my main system, I also encode a lossless file (and tell iTunes to only play the lossless, but send the mp3 to my BS2/BS3).  Classical music I generally only encode as lossless because I rarely put it on the BS2/BS3, and I can definitely hear the difference with classical.

I agree that the BS6 is too small to hold more than a few lossless music files.

I'm considering the purchase of a BS5, and will probably encode most everything as lossless (except for my daughter's pop music).  To me, it doesn't make sense to spend $6K on music player and then send it compressed files.  On the other hand, if you cannot tell the difference, then why not?

Stan

I just did my first album (not on a Beo5) on Apple Lossless, and i'm amazed how much it is better LOL.  I'm listening on my B&O headphones and i'm hearing things I haven't picked up before. 

The album (cd) was Tales of a Librarian by Tori Amos. 

Talking about BeoSound 6, you should remember that it can't playback lossles files anyway! The max bitrate is 320 kbps in WMA, only the Serenata can play lossless audio, and BeoSound 2 plays 192 kbps max, and as for BeoSound 3...I don't remember! It would have been so great to have all music systems play the same rates, because once you've stored all your CDs in lossless WMA (which I did when B&O made this possible), you realize that you can only play them on your BeoPort or BeoMedia at home, but only on the Serenata away from home, which is why I sold my BeoSound 2 and bought neither  BeoSound 6 nor BeoSound 3.

There was a time when all B&O products spoke the same language, I miss those times

Beosound2 and 3 both play > 192kbps.  I encode using LAME's default settings which I think is ~256kbps (MP3), and have tried higher (but found I couldn't tell the difference on the mobile devices).  True, they don't support lossless, but, IMHO, lossless is overkill for these devices - especially since they only support 2GB cards.

Stan