Should I convert all my audio to 256 AAC? Options

[DaGrandMastah]

Hi all, I'm currently researching what the best route is to go with when converting over my CD library. I realize that everyone loves Lossless (which I'll use for archiving the CD's) but I'm looking for "the best" lossy encoding.

I was originally planning to encode all my CD's into 320 CBR but it seems that almost everything I read states that this is a waste of space as their is nary a difference (except to the most trained ears) between 320 CBR and VBR v-0. Ultiamtely, I don't mind the difference in space when on my computer hard drive but it does become more of an issue when uploading to my iphone for portable listening so then I switched course and started thinking I would go with VBR v-0 (I posted a similar question to this in the mp3 forum) but now I'm reading that I may even be better off going with AAC 256?

This may make the most sense for me being that I'm a Mac user (imac, iphone, ipad) and I'm going to playing all my music out of my itunes library.

Is there any reason I would regret the decision to go AAC over mp3?

Also, for those with experience with this, could you direct me to the best possible setting to use in XLD for encoding CD's/FLAC files to aac?

[bigshot]

I've been building a music server for the past few years. Right now, it stands at well over a year's worth of music, all ripped from CDs. When I started ripping, I did careful line level matched listening tests of various cdecs and bitrates and the original CD. I found that for 95% of music AAC 192 and MP3 256 were completely transparent. But I ran across a couple of CDs that had textures that artifacted like crazy. I found that in order to encode those troublesome tracks properly, it required AAC 256 or MP3 320 LAME. I settled on AAC 256 VBR and started in ripping my collection of CDs. I'm still working my way through it all.

I keep hearing shocked gasps from audiophile acquaintenes that I'm not ripping to lossless. I just don't see the need. I own the CD- it's in a box in the garage. The AAC file sounds exactly the same and it's emailable, ipod friendly and compact. Why do I want to mess with lossless?

The other day, someone said, "What if you want to transcode to another format in te future?" well, I haven't ever needed to transcode. AAC works in everything I own and it sounds perfect. So just for yucks I took a well recorded classical piece and encoded it and reencoded it ten times- ten generations of transcoding. It sounded fine.

Lossless is overkill for just simple music playback.

[Porcus]

well over a year's worth of music, all ripped from CDs.
[...]
I own the CD- it's in a box in the garage.

That's OK if only one recording now and then has to be re-ripped at a higher quality. What you don't want, is to re-rip some 12000 (?) CDs. I did a job of half the size, and it took months (even with a carousel changer).