• Smokeydope@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Youtube automatically encodes its audio down to at most 128k in m4a format. Im not sure about bandcamp but its extracting the songs that play through the web browser so they probably also use lossy mp3 for web streaming the songs not higher bitrate FLAC but can’t say for certain. In general the audio stays the same downloaded as you hear it streamed through video. If you’re a big music nerd that absolutely needs highest quality bitrate in FLAC you’re better off sailing the high seas, but a casual music enjoyer won’t notice or care unless the source itself is bad quality like a bootleg live recording.