Vinyl, CD or MP3?

[The Penguin]

It takes top-of-the-line equipment, an excellent ear, and a lot of time and energy to distinguish between 320kbps mp3 and a lossless format like FLAC or ALAC.

I agree with King, analog vs digital is apples and oranges.

I can tell the difference between some mp3's (using, say, LAME VBR0) vs lossless, but...a lot depends on the equipment. One of those mp3's could sound better coming out of a high-quality DAC than a lossless file coming from, say, the onboard sound card of a cheap laptop.

I use lossless not just for sound quality, but for practical purposes, as they can be converted to any format I like. I don't listen to much music besides at home, but what little I have on my phone is mostly lossless stuff that I've converted to a lossy AAC.

I do have the ear for it though and can tell the difference. My old high school friend taught me audio and showed me the difference. I love my phone can play Flac music. The music artist put a lot of hard work into their music and I don't want to miss a single sound.