Is Sveta right for me? WMA to ALE?

[Agrajag]

Hello folks. I haven't been much of a portable audio fan for a number of reasons but due to several factors, I now find I need and want an iPod (long story). I have a 60GB unit on the way and my wife owns a 20GB HP/iPod model. I'm really turned off by a few things with respect to iTunes and the player itself.

On the software side, I have about 1200 songs that I find represent my current collection. I own all of them (ripped from CD's that I actually own) and decided on WMA9 Lossless as my format of choice. I do not want to get into a debate about my format choice here. It's working very well for my needs. I wanted a format that had solid support across the products and software I use (and it works well with all of them while none of the other formats works as well with all of them) and it serves as an excellent archive/backup of all my most important music. Yes, at some point I'll want to rip all the singles off of the CD's I own but for now, just having the ones I care about is the most important thing.

Those 1200 songs take up about 30GB of space in WMA9 Lossless format on my PC and that's perfectly fine with me. However, with iTunes, that also means that if I convert to Apple Lossless, I'll have to duplicate my entire music collection from 30GB to roughly 60GB and I really can't see why I'd need the songs twice on the same system. iTunes appears to pretty much demand the double duty.

Would Sveta allow me to keep just the one copy of my music on the PC and transfer some form of it to the iPod without the need for duplication? Optimally, would it allow me to move it from WMA9 Lossless to Apple Lossless without duplication?

Is there another option I'm not aware of? For example, I've wonder if, perhaps, there might be a hack out there to allow an iPod to play other formats like WMA9 Lossless?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.