Mile
Zero

Craig Anderton has an article in EQ Magazine this month with lots of cheap and easy recording fixes. I'm interested in making the change to 88.2kHz, 24-bit audio myself, after a Sound On Sound editorial discussed why bass sounds better when there's more resolution available to describe low-frequency waveforms.

Not to come across like a broken record, but what you can't do is increase audio quality after discarding large chunks of digital information--i.e., compression to MP3 or AAC. Wired reviews a few devices that claim to restore audio quality to portable music. My favorite snake oil is the third review, the Creative X-Fi, which garners a good score even though Wired can't say for sure what it did, or even if it did much at all. Judging by the demo on Creative's site, it sounds like a smile EQ setting, and possible a little drive for warmth. You'd be better off buying a bigger hard drive, and just ripping your CDs lossless. It takes a bit more work, but there would be a real, valuable audio difference.