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I agree with the point about the difference between mp3 v0 and lossless, although considerations for me in having opted for FLAC many years ago were: 1) the future-proofing benefit of being able to transcode to whatever new formats might emerge, and; 2) the absence of DRM.
boristrump-
I know a chap who spent £200k on his hifi. He's a pretty well known audiophile. When a manufacturer releases a new piece of kit for example, they normally send him a personally branded one as a gift so that he can audition it. Sennheiser made him a one off pair of walnut wood headphones for his birthday last year. Anyway, I digress.
He has been Flac only for nearly fifteen years now. (Used to pay £1k for 16GB of storage back then!).
Anyway, he set up a blind comparison for me when I first met him. I could tell a difference between Flac and 256kbps MP3 but it was extremely subtle.
To put it into context, I could hear a bigger difference when he bypassed his dual mains filters. You're going to need one hell of a rig to make it worthwhile.
Stonehedge
Honestly the easiest way of getting your hands on FLAC is via private torrent sites. The current largest site after what.cd's untimely demise currently has almost 700k albums in FLAC and 30k active users. If it makes you feel guilty just find the artist's website and buy some merch, they get a bigger cut from that anyway.
You should also determine whether it's worth the effort and disc space as very few people have ears and a system good enough to distinguish between lossless and mp3 V0.