Cableguy,
I think the real question you have to ask yourself first is am I sticking with the current program or am I looking for something better.
If you are going to stick with your current program, then your song files are all going to need to be in MP3+G (zipped or unzipped) to play in their player. However, judging from the problems you have had and that you have bought Microstudio already, I personnaly would start over and import all of them through Microstudio to get the best quality audio and graphics (BIN) then convert them to MP3+G using Songverter. You may have to work in batches if space is a problem, since the BIN files are from 30-40 MB each. Once you have converted them to MP3+G then the size drops to 4 - 10 MB depending on how much compression you use. Compression ratio will also effect quality in that the more you compress the file the more loss you have.
If you are considering using Hoster, then you have several options open to you. You can import directly into Hoster from the CDs (best method)or from the Hard Drive. Hoster also compresses the files but doesn't have any noticable loss of sound qualityand also has the graphics included and not in a separate file. Those files will also end up being the same size range as the MP3+G. Hoster can import and play most of the known file types so no matter what format you purchase a song in Hoster should be able to deal with it (CAVs formats excluded currently).
Now to answer you other questions. First a BIN file is an exact copy of the individual song track on the CD. The only difference is the last 3 characters in the name. On a CD if you look at it with Explorer will be track1.cda, track2.cda, etc. On the hard drive it will be named with more information and the extension BIN, but the content is exactly the same. Thus Microstudio copies the file from the CD to the hard drive and renames it. The advantage here is that Microstudio imports or copies very cleanly because of its error correction capabilities. So you use the BIN file to clean-up the import and reduce the graphic and audio glitches.
Then if you want to use your current player program you have to convert (reformat) each song file to MP3+G or they won't play. Microstudio doesn't do this but Songverter does and a whole lot more.
Sorry for getting so long winded, but I don't want to try to give you half explanations. Hope this helps.
