[bpavuk]

I am not that familiar with audio codecs, yet I think it's exciting if it means "music files will get smaller while keeping as much information". I keep ~50GB of FLAC music on desktop, but mostly I use MP3 320Kbps "mirror" of the music library, which is easier to sync to phone with Syncthing. the quality loss is... noticeable at best.

[theandrewbailey]

MP3 is a pretty bad codec compared to newer ones, no surprise that you noticed a quality drop. It should only be used for reasons of maximum compatibility.

I was using Ogg Vorbis 20 years ago, and that was a massive step up from MP3. Now, I have FLAC, and convert to 96k Opus for mobile and browser playback. Combined with listening in the car or through subpar headphones, I don't sweat about leaving a lot of quality behind, and the space savings are worth it.