Until I can find a nice, quiet, NAS RAID 10 or 0+1 set up with 1TB (guess I need 4 500MB drives) of storage for a decent price, I'm stuck with mp3s instead of wavs and a backing up my files on a separate hard drive. Because my mp3 "server" is on all the time, backing up is critical. It took me over a year to rip about 1K CDs, and I really don't want to do it again... I've already had one external backup drive die a nasty death. So, I'd urge you to think a bit about the back up costs relative to your time investment.
I'd also disagree on just using the highest sample rate. I use variable bit rate coding with the "-alt preset extreme" setting. I get about 10:1 compression and it sounds, to my ear, better than the results with constant bit rate encoding with files of the same size.
While I love Wi-Fi, make sure you go 802.11a or 11g and see how it performs in your house--from what I gather, 802.11b data rates in the real world (the one with walls and floors) may not support transfer of wav files on a real time basis.
I'd also disagree on just using the highest sample rate. I use variable bit rate coding with the "-alt preset extreme" setting. I get about 10:1 compression and it sounds, to my ear, better than the results with constant bit rate encoding with files of the same size.
While I love Wi-Fi, make sure you go 802.11a or 11g and see how it performs in your house--from what I gather, 802.11b data rates in the real world (the one with walls and floors) may not support transfer of wav files on a real time basis.