RunAwayFrog

YouTube has audio in Opus format@~150kbit/s. Opus is a much better format than MP3. Almost all audio is completely transparent at that bitrate, where with MP3s, there are cases where audio is not transparent without using non standard >320kbit/s bitrates (a lot of content is transparent @320kbits/s though).

Now, sites/tools like the one you mentioned take the Opus (or AAC) file/stream from YouTube, and lossily re-encodes it again, probably to a file that is larger than the original, with at best the same quality, but probably worse quality. You obviously can't get better output than the input in lossy compression.

So, the disk space argument is weird if you can play Opus/AAC (should be playable on every device nowadays).

This is the valid part for why you shouldn't use YT-to-MP3 converters.

But there are also invalid reasons why people will tell you it's shit:

• They think all MP3s sound like the shit ones from a decade (or two, or three) ago, using low bitrates and/or created with shit encoders. In reality, not all MP3s sound like shit, but vigilance is needed at every encoding step, as is the case with all lossy conversions.
• They are conflating the quality of the conversion, with the quality of the source, and think the bad quality of some user-uploaded YouTube content is due to the lossy conversion done by YouTube, and/or the MP3 converter re-encoding from YouTube. Content uploaded by the copyright holders (assuming basic competence) does not have that problem at all.

I won't be able to fully replace it, I'm afraid. Not before communities gain the ability for their posts to not show up in high traffic feeds.

Some subreddits I follow have this set, but this is not yet implemented in Lemmy if I'm not mistaken. So a workable move to Lemmy for them is not possible at this moment.

Just as the other user said, using YouTube Audio for this stuff is the way to go.

Just look for <Artist Name> - Topic channels and check the playlists (not the uploads). You should find full albums uploaded directly by copyright holders. Use a VPN if you don't find anything. Sometimes stuff from your region will not be available in your region, but available if you appear to be somewhere else ;)

Also, if we are going old style P2P, and not using torrents for some reason (RuTracker deserves a special mention), then DC++ should come before SoulseekQT/Nicotine+ anyway.

Mostly lossless grabs from torrents + YouTube Audio (edit: using yt-dlp), and you have a selection with guaranteed high quality*. Definitely better than whatever scattered MP3s in SoulseekQT/Nicotine+

* Opus@150kbits/s is transparent, except for some killer samples heard by a trained ear.