The only benefit to compression is smaller file size - which was great back in the 90's when MP3 got its start, and is still handy for portable MP3 players. Ripping to .wav is basically using the hard drive as a disc transport for many, many CD's at once - in my mind, it's the most ideal way of storing audio for playback (if you've got the disc space). A lot of folks have turned to FLAC because it's lossless (and therefore should be indistinguishable from a WAV file) and takes about half the space. Of course, a WAV file should also be more universally compatible than FLAC.

AudioBear just gave me a good idea. I might grab a basic iPod dock and hook it to the stereo since that has a line out that is fed from the dock connector. Hmm....