what program are you using to rip the cds? If your ultimate destination is your iPod (via iTunes?), you might be best off ripping them into iTunes to apple lossless (as this will create clones of the cds in a lossless format that a newish iPod should recognize/play) you can even set up iTunes to transcode to a lossy version when x-fering to your iPod to save space on your iPod. I don't recall ever having a drm issue when ripping css -- dvd audio and blu-ray yes, but not with cd --