Basically nobody can hear the difference between 320kbps mp3 and flac. Or 256kbps and 320kbps mp3.
I prefer flac because it works as an archive you can easily render from or use as a wav if needed. In theory repeated re-encodings could introduce artifacts down the line, I don’t have to think about that with flac. Plus the people releasing flacs tend to be nerds, they do good rips. It’s more likely that an audio quality issue will be something like ripping from a CD with scratches or a hole or ripping from dusty vinyl, only doing one pass, etc.
Basically nobody can hear the difference between 320kbps mp3 and flac. Or 256kbps and 320kbps mp3.
I prefer flac because it works as an archive you can easily render from or use as a wav if needed. In theory repeated re-encodings could introduce artifacts down the line, I don’t have to think about that with flac. Plus the people releasing flacs tend to be nerds, they do good rips. It’s more likely that an audio quality issue will be something like ripping from a CD with scratches or a hole or ripping from dusty vinyl, only doing one pass, etc.