I use foobar2000 with the ipod manager plugin.

If you like command lines you could try FFmpeg like this: http://askubuntu.com/questions/35457/converting-aac-to-mp3-via-command-line[^] Or using LAME + Foobar2000: http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/convert_aac_m4a_to_mp3.cfm[^]

Isopuzzle does a pretty good job of recovering data from damaged discs. It works well with multiple drives - it builds up the image to form the complete iso.