[Rhum]

I'm looking for some help finding Lossless albums that are available for download. I'd prefer to not buy CDs because of their physical space, but if it comes down to that I will. The most important thing for me is consistency, I would like all digital downloads or all CDs. It seems to me that Hip Hop/Rap is a tough genre to find in a lossless format. I have bookmarked the sticky under Misc>Music that provides many sites for lossless downloads so I know those resources are available, but what if I can't find an artist or album on any of these sites. Are sites like 
hiphoplossless.com and flac-lossless.net providing legal lossless downloads or are they just as bad as a torrent? 

 

[cel4145]

Beatport sells some hip hop and rap.

Still, could be your best bet will be to buy CDs and rip them to lossless yourself. That's what many of us do. Then you can pack your CDs away in a box

 

[Rhum]

I may have to budge and start buying CDs. I don't mind ripping them myself, like I said before, I just don't have the space for them at the moment. I'd like to have a collection on a couple bookshelves in the future. 
 
My other two issues with CDs include having an archive of my library stored three separate times as I would have the CDs themselves, the FLAC files stores locally on an external drive as well as on the Google Play server as 320kb MP3s, then again when has redundancy ever been a bad thing when it comes to digital data.
 
Secondly, I dislike that the CDs will only be able to be ripped to 44.1kHz and 16bit. Should I be concerned about this? Is there any real audible difference when downloading a FLAC that can provide 96kHz and 24bit? I just like having the best of everything which drives me to want the highest quality audio possible even if it is outside an audible range. 

 

[cel4145]

Once you rip them, you can store them in a box under a bed. One thing I look for is like new CDs since I'm just going to rip them. I don't care if they are brand new.

I don't worry about higher sampling rate music. Audio science suggests that the higher sampling rate is not needed. Although certainly some remastered high resolution albums off HD Tracks may be better quality because of the mastering, not the sampling rate. As it is, there is no advantage to ripping a CD to a higher sampling rate than the default.

 

[Tail]

There is no audible difference between 16 / 44.1(48) and 24/192 at all, only more headroom, technically higher DNR but it's only useful in studio because that higher DNR won't be even used at the end, because of physical reasons (lowest signal can't be lower than certain level and it cannot go too loud, so the music is always mastered with less than capability of CD which is 96 dB dynamic range, 24 bit has 144 dB DNR but nothing uses that high range when finished and ready for sale, not even those remastered recordings that sell at 24/192 such as HD Tracks for example).
So it's a kind of gimmick, it sounds the same completely, even in theory and it's not a matter of anyone's opinion. I'll link you nice article from here on head-fi if I find it where it's very well explained.