What’s the point of lossless audio like FLAC, APE and probably more? Can anyone actually hear the difference between a 192kbps MP3 album and a FLAC album? And the FLAC is probably four times the size plus you’ve to download extra codecs and have to convert to another format before you upload to your iPod. Posting albums in this format seems to be the new trend on usenet. Raging.
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It depends on what you are playing your audio files through, on a home stereo or through a decent set of computer speakers there can be a large difference. And with hard drives reaching 1 Terabyte size is really not much of an issue anymore except on portable players. One of my biggest reasons for using lossless formats is that I want to encode my music one time, then it can be encoded to any other format I want but I always have the original lossless file.
Yes, some people can hear distinct differences. Others cannot. If you cannot hear it, leave it be and stick to MP3’s. If you can, you’re screwed because you’ve likely just been biten by the audiophile bug.
If you doubt my claim, look into the hi-fi scene.
FLAC and other lossless formats are especially good for encoding bootlegs. This is why usenet is full of them! It doesn’t take that long to encode to lossy formats anyway!