What's your preferred lossy format for audio then?
I've heard great things about ogg retaining quality even at surprisingly lower bitrates.
MP3 and AAC although even Microsoft's WMA is decent for audio at super low quality.
From what I recall dealing with Ogg was always a pain.
Really? I never had any issues with creating or using ogg. Unless you account the lack of ubiquity as being a pain; then yes, I agree.
MP3 or AAC might just be the safest route, though I dare not fall anywhere under 256kbps.
Also has WMA improved over the years? I've avoided it like the plague do to it's rapid degradation in quality regardless of bitrate. Simply sounded like ***no matter what I did :/
You want a format that was truly awful even back in it's day, try Real Audio.
But yeah, MP3s sound decent at 128, that used to be the standard quality. AAC is good at 192 too.
Don't know when you tried WMA last, but when it first came out it was horrible, but since then it's improved substantially. I think it took until version 9 for the greatest improvement, lol. I wouldn't use anything under 128 here either. 128 seems to be the key bitrate for a lot of things.