Which audio file format should I download?

Here's a little experiment I did a few years ago when I was going through the same questions.

I ripped Garden of Dreams by The Flower Kings from the CD and cut a 6 min and an 18 min section out.

Then I converted them to mulitple formats. I saw no point in going lower than 256kps for MP3's.

6 Minute 256 = 111 MB

6 Minute 320 = 13.9 MB

6 Minute FLAC - 46.8 MB

6 Minute WAV = 61.4 MB

18 Minute 256 = 33.8 MB

18 Minute 320 = 42.2 MB

18 Minute FLAC = 122 MB

18 Minute WAV - 186 MB

Really? Think again.

I guess it depends on HOW MUCH music you want/need to store.

I thought that FLAC was more for sound folks than it would be for the general listener ... I have on mp3's now, shows from Space Pirate Radio and I did them all into 256 MP3's about 20 years ago, and I had to send some parts to someone and had to redo some of the material in a much lower level ... and guess what ... I could not tell the difference!

I suppose that if you had a sound system that cost mega-thousands, you might say that you can hear the difference, but I seriously doubt it ... after one test the first thing you will say is ... what a waste of money ... unless you are a musician and you are "recording" for your band, when the quality and the clarity might be the most preferable of all choices!

The thing that hurts is that the majority of people have only heard the music in very cheap mp3 or Apple bs, and these folks have no idea what a LP sounded like, and how the music was so much brighter, before it got toned down ... which had happened before, even to the Beatles ... the American version of Sgt Pepper's was a copy found on some latrine trash can in Hollywood! Same later for PF's DSOTM ... and you would be, more than likely, hearing the mp3's of these albums on Apple or some other cheap crap system, done in such low quality that you don't know what you missed along the way.

It all depends on your listening ability ... you can spend all the money in the world to get 10 hard drives, but it won't make any difference if your listening habits are not disciplined and educated to that point!

Think about that before dumping money into the typical nothingness in the music departments all over ... not only equipment, but also the music itself!

I’m sure there will be better ears than mine, and I know there is better equipment out there than what I have. But for what I have to work with, there’s no point in me taking up space with lossless or higher lossy files, when I’m happy enough to listen to 256 and 320 files. 🤷🏻‍♂️

For the original poster: You basically have to have a balance and weigh things accordingly. If space is really going to be an issue and you cannot afford to upgrade by adding an external hard drive, then that's going to drive you to acquire smaller file sizes. Essentially mp3 files. If you are purchasing a download from Bandcamp, Bandcamp will allow you to download in a variety of formats. Try them all and see if the smaller files are up to your listening quality. If they are, then go with that.

As to the future of music in the coming decades, I suspect physical formats will generally all be niche buyers, but you never know. Downloads will likely be stored in the cloud rather than on personal hard drives. The space issue will still remain because cloud services are by subscription and the amount of space you have will be limited to how much you want to pay for the higher-priced subscriptions. The one advantage to cloud services is that you can normally access them from multiple devices without taking up storage space on any of the devices other than the app for accessing the cloud. I'm paying $100 per year for 2TB of Google Drive, but it's been well worth it. I don't use it for music (except for the stuff I make myself, which is just a backup in case a hard drive fails), but it's great for sharing genealogical research, photographs, movies I make with my phone, and stuff like that.

Just a quick clarification...at my desk I listen to mostly lossless or 320 files through JBL near field monitors.

But when I'm doing yard work or going to the grocery store and have my iPod shuffle and Blackberry earbuds with me, they're all 256 files. And that's just fine.