this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2026
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At that quality of MP3 you'd really need either a track that specifically pushes the limits of the codec on technicalities, or a one in a million hearing + high precision monitors.
Albeit FLAC is generally a better option still because it compresses things losslessly, reducing raw file size 50-70% (comparable to MP3 at 128kbps bitrate) and is a royalty-free, meaning it can be freely implemented as a hardware codec.
For example, a bunch of microcontrollers in the ESP32 family have built in FLAC codecs that outperform their MP3 counterparts, meaning a FLAC library can be directly streamed to them, and with the right DAC combo, one can build inexpensive, low power adapters to hook their existing AV systems up to Sonos-style streaming. And with many AV systems supporting bidirectional RS232 (or other serial) communications for controlling the system and querying it's state, you can literally smartify them completely AND provide high quality audio streams to them.
128kbps files are roughly 90% compression from raw, so not comparable. I'll admit that I haven't bothered with FLAC much, but in my limited experience it generally is pretty rare to see much above 50-55% compression from raw.
Anything that requires remuxing multiple times pretty much requires lossless compression. Else it'd become like screenshots of memes because the compression adds up.
That being said, last time I was working with professional audio people, they still preferred WAW as their intermediary format.
Probably because of habit?
Thing is, storage isn't at a premium anymore, so there's no reason not to use lossless even if you can't hear the difference.
U sure about that?
Old mp3 players used to measure space in megabytes, so yes, I'm sure of that.
Good for you, i had one of those.
Now go check the storage prices now and please define what "premium" is, 'cos last i checked they're being overhyped - not as much as RAM, but on a similar trend.
I think FLAC is considered lossless so the comparison should be with WAV; whereas for lossy you have MP3/Vorbis.
MP3 patents expired a while ago i think, but for the longest time i've used Vorbis because of that.