Um, .wav is a lossless format. It's just raw PCM with no compression. An upscaled FLAC from a lossy source is not lossless, even though it's stored in a lossless compatible format (FLAC). A properly encoded and compressed MP3 file will sound very close to the lossless source, but when procuring those lossy files from third parties, you rely on whoever compressed them doing it properly. I prefer to store my music repository in a lossless format, and stream/sync in lossy.

Yeah, but that argument was compelling in 2005.

With storage as cheap as it is nowadays, a 15 MB FLAC audio file vs. a 3 MB MP3 really doesn't matter anymore. Those 12 MB cost nothing to store.

And to be honest, in cases where storage does matter, a 320 kbps MP3 is just a waste of space. A VBR MP3 with average bitrate around 200 kbps makes way more sense and nobody can tell the difference between that and 320 kbps in a double blind test.

So just maintain FLAC or other lossless for sharing music and transcode down when needed.

In my case I use FLAC because when Plex transcodes, FLAC > Opus sounds better than MP3 > Opus. Almost all my media was ripped by me direct from CD, with some coming from Bandcamp.

FLAC Not to mention the fact that almost all music is recorded in .wav files nowadays, and the "lossless" versions are usually just synthetically upscaled for the audiophile crowd.

Yeah, this isn’t how that works.

“Lossless” refers to a mathematical property of the type of compression. If the data can be decompressed to exactly the same bits that went into the compressor then it’s lossless.

You can’t “synthetically upscale” to lossless. You can make a fake lossless file (lossy data converted into a lossless file format) but that serves zero purpose and is more of an issue with shady pirate uploaders.

Lossless means it sounds exactly like the CD copy, should it exist. That’s really all. And you want lossless for any situation where you’ll be converting again before playback. Like, for example, Bluetooth transmission.

Not to mention the fact that almost all music is recorded in .wav files nowadays, and the “lossless” versions are usually just synthetically upscaled for the audiophile crowd

WAV and FLAC are both lossless, the reason people use FLAC is because WAV doesn't (or didn't) have good support for tags and FLAC has lossless file compression while WAV usually is uncompressed. There isn't any sort of "upscaling" that is done.

Personally, I think a quality v0 or 320kb/s MP3 is perfectly fine for listening but I'm always going to prefer storing lossless audio so I can convert the files to whatever format I want/need. I've moved around between MP3, AAC, and Opus for different devices and if I didn't have the FLAC files I would either have to redownload files or do lossy to lossy transcodes

The difference in sound quality between a .flac and 320 .mp3 is imperceptible to the majority of people and needs thousands of dollars of listening equipment to become apparent.

I would disagree with this. It isn't really a matter of equipment cost. It may be a matter of not having ever heard a direct comparison between versions of the same track, though.

What I've noticed is that you really need e.g. wired headphones to be able to hear this difference. The compression artifacts of MP3 are quite distinct, but since Bluetooth tends to compress audio as well, this eliminates a lot of the difference between lossy and lossless sources.

I can hear the difference clearly with cheap (≈$50) wired headphones on my android phone (which is nothing special and a few years old). It is particularly noticeable with high frequency sounds, like hi-hats, which tend to sound muddy with a kind of digital sizzle.

Jokes on you, I have thousands of dollars in listening equipment

I totally agree, I was just perpetuating the meme

Do you know a reliable tracker? I have lidarr set up to find lossless versions, but it's pretty terrible at it.

Look for the Redtopia torrent. About 6tb of flac albums and another half terabyte of .mp3s

Where does one begin to find flac? I am taking the first steps beyond "finding a movie to play for free"

This is the way. Also, FLAC for high bit rate audiophile vinyl rips.

looks at his 42TB NAS