AAC, AIFF, Lossless, MP3

portugal11, i actually use the Sonos wireless music system. It has a digital out that I then send into my Cary 306.

For encoding, I use EAC using LAME encoder. I never tested other formats like AAC, OGG, etc.

Portugasl - just so you are clear, there is no iPod output that goes to a DAC. Both the headphone and the line out (USB/dock) provide an analog signal. As far as quality goes, my experience is like Jeffreybowmans - up the quality of the righ and you will hear it. I also agree with him that using the sync feature is the way to manage the content.

Let me leave you with another thought. Like a lot of people you are backing into hard drive based digital. My prediction is that this will replace your transport in the next 24 months. From that perspective spending your time ripping to anything less then lossless means that you will be going back to rerip your CD collection again - soon. Look at the big picture and manage what you carry around as opposed to limiting how you will manage your music in the future.

Portugal11: What you are proposing is very cumbersome, but certainly possible. You will want to make sure that you have configured itunes to selectively synch to your ipod. the best way is probably to specify that itunes only synch "checked" files. Then you could make sure that only the MP3 files have been checked in your music library.

As for the import settings. i highly recommend 320VBR with Highest as the setting for quality. You find these in the Preferences tab. The other settings for importing can be left "auto" (which i believe is the default).

All of this advice is premised on the thought that you will be using the line out with upgraded earphones and an external amplifier. If, on the other hand, you are simply using the stock earbuds that come with the ipod run from the earphone output the, IMHO, it doesn't much matter what settings you use b/c it will all sound like crap anyways. Again, that's just my opinion.

Jeffreybowman2k, I am not the expert but I dont think there is a 320VBR. If you are using the newest version of LAME 3.97, then the highest VBR setting you can use is -V 0 which will give you an average bitrate of around 256. What quality switch are you using?