[U2Lynne]

Converting to mp3 definitely decreases the quality. The audio files you download here - flac, shn, ape - are *lossless* audio files. Whereas mp3 are lossy. In order to make the files small, they get rid of a bunch of the sound they figure people won't miss much. And, you probably won't miss it listening to the stuff on your iPod. But, you will definitely miss it when listening to your shows on a home stereo system. What you really don't want to do is convert to mp3 and then share those files. You should keep all your downloaded flac/shn/ape files saved on whatever media you choose and then if you want to share the show with someone, share those original files.

iPods will not play flac. There is a third party application you can install on your iPod called Rockbox and if you install that, then you may play flac files. iPods will play wav/aiff files which are what you convert to when you decompress the flac files.