To begin with, I do hope this is not your DJ collection. Having 17k+ tracks and growing is not the way to go imho. If you are just digitizing your full CD collection, that’s a different story.
I’d consider getting something like dBpoweramp to import. It’s much easier to set the parameters you want, you can save your tracks wherever you like, prep them and then import them into iTunes. I never use iTunes to rip CDs, but that is just me.
I rip to FLAC (which is lossless but does save me some space on my harddisk), then I make 320kbps MP3 out of them and those I import into iTunes. That way I have the original lossless files per album on my harddisk and the much smaller MP3s in my iTunes.
If you do choose iTunes to rip/import CDs with, these are your options:
* Losless – uncompressed: Either WAV or AIFF (the latter not supported by all DJ software, so tricky. WAV has less tagging options. Both take up exactly as much space as the original.
* Losless – compressed: My favorite here would be FLAC, but this is not an option in iTunes. That leaves you with ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Compression). Not supported by anything but Apple gear, so not really an option either imho.
* Lossy. Either AAC or MP3. Again, slightly smaller support for AAC than for MP3 should you ever choose to use your tracks outside iTunes. Go for the highest quality (AAC 256 or 320MP3), set to full stereo (not joint).
Also set to use error detection, this will make ripping slower but you will have less errors in the final rip.
Again, I suggest ripping outside iTunes with a good tool like dBpoweramp, but it’s your choice of course.
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