If I may add my $0.02 here...

I started copying my entire CD collection a long time ago as wav format. The way I saw it, having spent considerable coin on my audio gear it just did not make sense to compress when it wasn't necessary. I kind of thought that as space ran out on my hard drive(s), I'd buy more as they were bound to get cheaper. This has indeed been the case. I have a separate library of MP3's (now and then I convert chunks of wav files to mp3 at 192 kbps) that I use to load up on my iRiver, my daughter's memory stick, or my wife's iPod. I found that (for me anyway), 192 was pretty close to the original sound quality (especially given being played back through typical mp3 player headphones). Still, in my mind Gonk makes agood point about FLAC (I have a friend / colleague who recently converted her library (wav) to FLAC and she is using a squeezebox 3 at home.

While I do not own a Squeezebox, I do own three networked Turtle Beach Audiotrons (one of which feeds the 990 optically and the others feed their respective systems in the house via the analog output of the Audiotron) and can tell you that it fundamentally changed the way I viewed my music collection (speaking philospohically). It is incredibly nice to have 12,000 + wav files all just 'there'...all networked...and all available to any and all computers / computer appliances that can see my network.

I too have thought about converting to FLAC, but frankly...I still have plenty of room left on the hard drives that I am using, and when the time comes to add another, they will be cheaper still. Again, as I see it...if I don't need to (lossily) compress, then I won't. The only reason that I have the MP3's in the first place is to maximize both the number of files on the portable devices as well as optimize their battery life (i.e. in hard drive based players wav files require more I/O from the hard drive due to the (limited) buffer size. So while at the track or on an airplane I can happily live with 192 kbps through headphones (and I have some pretty decent after market (Shure) ones now), but for my 'real' listening at home over the 990, the dB Systems amplifiers and my B&W 801's...I'll stick with uncompressed.

Mark