lossless audio file- These have the same high-quality and well preserved sound as the original recording. Some examples include: FLAC, ALAC, and WAV
lossy audio file- These discard some data for smaller file sizes. The data that is discarded is deemed inaudible or irrelevant. This results in a trade-off between file size and audio quality. Some examples include: MP3, AAC, and Vorbis.
Normalization v Compression: Normalization adjusts the overall volume of a track to a target level, while compression reduces the dynamic range