According to the blurb with my H4n Zoom recorder, CD quality = mp3 168kbps. (Maybe someone can correct me if that's not the case). The Zoom can record up to mp3 328 kbps.
I see no reason to save recordings at higher than CD quality, as for all practical purposes, that's the highest quality digital recording anyone is likely to listen to.
168 is not CD. There are a lot of myths about audio formats and quality however and especially digital/analog.
For a brief non too techy intro, so using analogous words rather than the correct ones: There are two variables in the digital format. Sample rate and bit depth. Sample rate is how many slices of info the format stores per second. Bit depth is the resolution of those samples. Think of it like a moving pictures, lot's of snapshots run too fast for you to detect the fact that they are discrete.
CD is 44.1 khz sample rate at 16 bits. What this actually means is that 44100 samples of amplitude (not
really) which can be from 0 to 65535 can be represented.
How does that affect the sound? Well Nyquist Therom means that can can theoretically represent up too 22.05 khz frequency, which is above the overwhelming majority of people's threshold of hearing (read as everybody's) so theoretically can represent anything we could ever need.
the 16 bit thing controls the dynamic range, from silence to full volume in 65536 increments. Basically the level of expression it is capable of representing. Contrast that with a midi controller's 128..... although to be fair that when using samples is only the attack levels for velocity.
Basically it should be perfectly ample for most applications if not all.
Ultra high sample/bit rates are extremely useful.... but not generally for playback as we can't really tell the difference. They are useful for floating point calculations in processing and thus recording studios etc. But I am getting too techy.
All 'lossy' formats such as MP3 have a lower resolution than this, but to varying degrees and it is debatable whether or not most people can hear the difference. It is in fact also dependant on the playback device and of course the level of compression. 168 is audible.
Lossless on the other hand like FLAC compress the material in a non-destructive fashion, returning all the original information once decoded correctly.
What you use personally? Well, if it sounds good to you, use it! If you are going to release it minimum WAV at 44.1/16 if you are going to do fancy ass processing go higher but at this point you should know whether you actually need to or not.
Don't stress it out too much ;-)