As I mentioned in one of the other threads, I've had a chunk of my library ripped at 128 for about 14 years, namely all my Pink Floyd, and I'm now gonna go ahead and rip them as FLACs (or try until I find out they're all scratched up). Who here has the ears or the setup to tell a 320 mp3 from lossless? I downloaded some Radiohead and Brian Eno in FLAC, and it sounds great, at least I tell myself.

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FLAC sounds great on good equipment. Otherwise....meh.

My ears are shot, my Seinheiser headphones (a gift) are long gone, and my system died in 2012, but there was a distinct difference in quality. NOne of that post-1985, non-vinyl sludgyness. Now that I am limited to my phone and car, I don't bother with FLAC or Apple lossless, as long as it is ripped at 320, because I can't tell the difference. Oddly enough, I was actually listening to a lot of Brian Eno and Blue and Elastica at about the time the whole system died. I had a friend who transferred hundreds of gigs from vinyl to FLAC and then he moved to Colorado before I could get it....in short, I'm envious.

Hard drives are cheap...just rip everything Lossless and then convert as needed if you have limited space on your iPhone or portable device. Having said that, I think the compression algos are so good now that I often can't tell the difference between my original ripped CDs (lossless) and MP3 coming through Sonos/Spotify on my main rig (some of that due to newer remasters).

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320 kbps is all you need on 95% of systems.

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Rick Hahn is the best GM in baseball.

I had a feeling you started a thread about this and I (shudders) used the search function to find it.
How have you (if you have) been progressing thru your process so far?
I think anyone would agree that 128 is pretty much garbage (unless it's 2000 and you're just praying that Here Come the Warm Jets from limewire or wherever is actually the album and not mislabeled German piss porn).
I have been, slowly but surely, been erasing and re-loading my collection using Apple Lossless, because I am realizing that my AAC files weren't even 320, but 256. Some of the iTunes individual tracks I bought 10 years ago are 128, but I can always find HQ files on Spotify. I'm mostly updating my stuff because a: I don't really find it to be that much of a chore, b: my entire collection was on 2 separate external hard drives, and I want everything in one place on iTunes, and c: I also kinda tell myself that I can hear the difference when I can't sometimes, but a lot of times I can tell, and I just want the best available digital file so I can stow these cds away for good or until I move. If you've got the HD space, and the time and patience, I don't see why anyone wouldn't just encode with Apple lossless. The only thing I know about FLAC is that I have about 30 or 40 pieces that I can only play using VLC player, so I'm also in the process of trying to find a lot of that stuff at the library so I can just get rid of the FLAC stuff entirely. I like VLC's EQ abilities, but in general, it's a pain in the ass but iTunes and my iPhone won't play them otherwise, so....that's where I'm at.

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Just chillin' like Garret Quillin.

I use EAC to rip to FLAC and then Foobar is super fast if I want to convert FLAC to 320 MP3. There is a thing called the Loudness War, which makes it hard to tell the difference in sound quality because the dynamic range of the music is missing because the music is mastered very loud.

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God is the uncaused cause of the universe. He had no beginning and has no end. He is not bound by the laws of the universe he created.