How do I dowload higher rez songs on iTunes?

this is why, with few exceptions, I never buy online. Until services offer lossless downloads, I will remain a CD and vinyl guy.

Tomas, what's even scarier is that a major local retailer here in Australia (Dick Smith Powerhouse, who own Tandy/Radio Shack here) is phasing out regular CD's, and now has a computer kiosk where customers pick and mix their own CD - all compressed files, about 5MB per song. When I asked a salesgirl if I could do a pick & mix CD of uncompressed music, I got an emphatic 'no'. The writing is really on the wall for CD's; start buying any discs you've always wanted now!

As for Ian's original question...
iTunes only does compressed files. There are other sites that allow full-res downloads, which you'd have to convert to a file type iTunes and your Touch can use.
That said, 32GB will be swallowed up pretty quickly if you want to do AIFF or Lossless; maybe decide how much critical listening you're really likely to do with your Touch, and maybe stick to High Quality AAC rips. That way you'll fits hundreds of still excellent quality audio on what is essentially meant to be a portable (not home) device.

Hear! Hear Tomasedison... I completely agree!

iTunes 'standard' downloads are only 128k.

A brief rant (sorry if I'm off topic):

To me, this is the biggest crime against music and audiophilia. A whole generation of people are growing up without ever hearing even 'cd' quality music. With broadband becoming almost universal, there is no longer a need to decimate the sound in the name of download speeds. Would authors stand for 'abridged' versions only of their books sold on Amazon? Would movie producers/directors stand for lopped off edges of their films on all versions rented on Netflix? Musicians and music consumers need to demand better from iTunes and other digital download sites!

Even iTunes + ('higher' res) downloads are only 256K mp3.
That's somewhat better than their sadly inadequate 'standard' downloads, but not satisfactory for most audiophiles.

As Synthfreek said, stick to ripping music from your own cds. I would save iTunes for downloading spoken word podcasts, or perhaps for downloading selected songs as 'trials' before buying them on physical cds.

You do know that you can just "rip" songs from your cds right? This is when you would make sure the importing setting are on Apple Lossless before you start. I still occasionally talk to people who think you have to download everything you put on an ipod.

I don't think so if download from the Itunes store. There is a preference setting in itunes that allows you to modify the audio codec for downloads, but everything from itunes store has DRM embedded in it and you can only download as an MPeg4. You can buy converter software, but i don't think that will get you to a hi-rez file.