I was hoping that some people would weigh in on whether lossless files, many of which are *.wavs at the moment, should be compressed to FLAC. The conversion will not result in any quality loss, but would save bandwidth and perhaps make people more likely to download the smaller filesizes. But on the other hand, FLAC support is not built-in on Windows 7 or lower, so downloaders might be confused as to how to install the FLAC codec for Windows Media Player, or another media player that supports FLAC.

Anyone have any comments on this one?

I've done a Google search for iPod compatible file formats, and FLAC is not one of them. Being someone that dumps his entire musical library on his iPod, I'd err on the side of caution and stick with the current format. Besides, having to download or install an extra plugin or converter or somesuch will likely aggravate quite a few members - existing and potential.
For comparison, it's like installing a brand new game and then having to wait another half-hour waiting for the updates to download.

Quick question for Shred,

Do you copy the source files to your iPod? Or, do you download the MP3 conversions and copy those to your iPod? Since one CD alone takes 700MB, I would imagine you probably copy the MP3s, because the iPod would be full otherwise, right?

Myself, I listen to the highest quality files on a 7.1 speaker system in the basement. While I don't usually listen to the converted files, if I did, I would probably use those on my Galaxy S3, which can't play 24-bit audio anyway and has very little space.