[Hellhog]

So right now I use WP7 and Zune which is nice because I rip CD Albums to WMA Lossless using EAC. When I put them on my phone, I always compress them to somewhere between 192-320kbps. My lossless songs are on average 3.5-4 times larger in filesize than the lossy ones.

I know WP8 doesn't use Zune for syncing. Do the syncing software options available allow conversion while syncing? Also how do podcasts work without Zune?

Thanks!

[DBDev]

I don't know about the compression, but for the podcasts I recommend using a app like Podcatcher | Appar+spel i Windows Phone Store (Sverige)

[Chris_Kez]

The syncing software does not do any kind of conversion. It doesn't do much of anything really. You'll need to use a separate program to handle conversions/manage your desktop collection. iTunes is probably the most ubiquitous manager, but lots of folks can recommend better options. You may want to search for "Zune replacement". If you just want to drag and drop music I'm sure you could find a simple, lightweight audio converter.

As for podcasts, I'd look at 3rd party apps on the phone. I listen to about 20 hours of podcasts each week and the hardest change for me when I came over from iOS was not having Instacast. I tested maybe a dozen apps and finally settled on Podcast Lounge. I think it was $2 but it has a nice interface, background downloading and has gotten several good updates.

If you need to maintain a mirrored podcast collection on the desktop, it is possible but I only took a few steps down that path before I bailed out.