[gnud]

I think you're confusing lossless vs lossy with 192khz vs 44.1khz - in that case I agree with you, no percievable difference.

I can also hear differences between lossless/lossy encodings. If I tweak encoding parameters until I don't notice a difference, there is usually no real space saving afterwards - so why not go with lossess instead?

[sjwright]

I'm not confusing these matters. I'm specifically talking about lossless vs lossy. The key point is I'm taking about nominally transparent lossy which for codecs like AAC and Opus is around 160-256 kbps depending on the listener. Even at 256 kbps, that's anywhere between half and quarter the bitrate of FLAC. (Which has an average bitrate around 700 kbps but can swing wildly up or down depending on the specific material.)