(necessary for audio conversion)

If you truly care about lossless audio, stop using YouTube. Here are superior alternatives:

If you are looking for true lossless audio rather than "YouTube rips," consider these sources: FLAC compression level comparison - The Z-Issue

Use tools like yt-dlp to download the highest-quality audio stream (usually Opus).

A faint static hiss gave way to a sound like fingers tracing the edge of a vinyl record. The voice told a story that began ordinary: a young woman named Mara, a small coastal town that smelled of kelp and diesel, a shop that sold used CDs and curious files burned onto blank discs. The shopkeeper was an old man who knew the exact song to play when customers needed to leave differently than they’d come in. Mara liked to run her fingers across the crates and read the scribbled setlists on paper sleeves. One afternoon a man pressed a small silver USB drive into her hand and said, “Take care of this. Don’t name it. Don’t upload it. And if someone asks why, tell them it’s lost.”

: YouTube's maximum audio quality is typically 128 kbps Opus or AAC (lossy formats).

yt flac