I have just completed a swap round with my computers, involving a disk
upgrade and moving my soundcard, which raises a couple of questions (and
also leaves my recent emails, address book and Favourites stranded 'offline'
atm):

The soundcard has digital input and outputs and offers both 44.1 KHz and 48
KHz output sampling rates. Selecting either of these seems to sound fine and
I can't say that I can tell the difference. (I cannot lay hands on the spec
sheet for the DAC atm, but I suspect it's happy either way.) Which output
should I select to be 'right' or 'best' for playing WAVs, MP3s and CDs from
the computer?

Next, the hard disk upgrade (200Gb) means I am better able to record music
and save it as WAVs which, I have to say, sound pretty convincing played
through the DAC. The question here is whether or not this the 'best' thing
to do - I can play them or make CDRs from them and so on, but is there a
'better' way to save the music for any reason? High bitrate MP3s or summat?