FLAC and monkey audio are GREAT lossless alternatives to MP3! They do have bigger file sizes, but it is worth it, in my opinion. If you chose to keep with a lossy standard, why not try Ogg Vorbis. It uses a better compression algorithm, so a 192k .ogg sounds much better than a 192k MP3. Finally, if you are completely intent on retaining MP3 format, try enabling VBR in lame, and setting the quality preset to 10 or 11.