I can hear the difference between mp3(320) and flac/alac easily on my stereo both in the car and in my room. The funny part is that you can easily recognize mp3 compression based on high it trims the high frequencies and the high hats are affected by it quite a bit. You can try different lossy formats but i guess it is just damage control. The only reason I use alac and not flac is because iPods only work with alac (and it is limited to 16bit, 44100Hz) and my car only supports iPods :(