which do you prefer and why? for anyone who isn't sure of the difference lossless audio formats are like .wav, .flac, etc. and are essentially the same as just putting a cd into your sound system of choice. usually 44.1khz 16bit depth, and some other long ass number that i can't remember. compressed formats are something like .aac, .mp3, etc. and usually compromise sound quality for the sake of file size. now i know a lot of people are probably thinking at this point "well who gives a crap if it's a little bit smaller? i want my music to sound great right?" true, but mp3 files for example are significantly smaller than say a wav. like a 40 minute album in a lossless format could easily take up 500mb whereas the same album as a lossy format might only take up 90mb. that's the major reason people use a lossy format. there are ways to mitigate the loss of quality such as increasing the sample rate. anything list 320khz for the sample rate and it's pretty difficult for someone who isn't trained to hear the differences/audiophiles that take sounds seriously to notice any loss of quality when compared to lossless. but then the files naturally get bigger, though still not as big as lossless mind you.
i myself prefer lossless audio formats for two reasons. the first is that storage is incredibly cheap right now. you can get a terabyte HDD for less than $100. and the second is that i have a sound system that can really take advantage of the lossless audio. if i didn't have a solid setup i really wouldn't care. but unfortunately i got spoiled.
Edit: just as a heads up just saying that people only really know about the mp3 file format is an acceptable answer, but it's not really what i'm looking for.