Best compression format for PC Jukebox


I'm getting a Brick, Wavelength Computer DAC here real soon and will be using my laptop for the server. I have already saved most of my CDs for my iPod in AAC /128. I suspect I will want to save music files in another format and better quality. Will I need to purge the lesser quality files?
Should I use anothe computer...one for iPod one for server?

I've read some about Exact Audio Copy but have heard that it's a little comlicated.
Any suggestions?
HD space not an issue. I'm willing to get external drive for my Dell PC...any suggestions there?

Thanks,

MC
musicubed
EAC isn't particulary difficult to use, and it does ensure bit-perfect copies of readable CDs.

No reason to use different computers for storage if you don't want to. AAC files and other formats have different extensions, they will just appear twice in whatever jukebox software you use. But, most software like that will let you filter by file type, so that isn't even a big issue.

I've ripped all my CDs in .wav format, but that format doesn't support any sort of standardized tagging. Kind of annoying, but there are iTunes applescripts to restore artist/album data from the directory structure if you rip consistently to Drive:\..\artist\album\song.wav, which you can do with EAC. Ripping as .wav files also means no compression. I gather using apple's lossless AAC, you can get 2:1 compression with no data compromise. Haven't messed with that (or iTunes as a ripper).

Good luck.
Edesilva,

So EAC for CD ripping...got that.

Any suggestions for storage and playback besides iTunes?

Thanks,

MC
I'm currently encoding all of my CDs in flac format (free lossless audio codec), which usually produces files about 35% to 60% of the size of the originals for my music (your mileage may vary, but 2:1 is a safe average). Same tag support as Ogg Vorbis or MP3. A number of players will suppport flac, including winamp (if you download and install the flac codecs... can't remember the links but Google should help), foobar (natively), and the one I'm using for its organazational capabilities, wxmusik.