youtube-dl's name is unfortunate since it.grew.to support many other sites, such as SoundCloud. You can download flac or wav files often using it on SC content.

YouTube-dl provides the list of all the available formats. You choose the desired quality.

Looks like it's time for you to learn about the magic that is youtube-dl. It will change your life.

Bad. Lossy -> Lossy transcoding will always introduce artifacts. Unless the origin source is lossless. (Actually lossless, not a file someone transcoded to a lossless format from a lossy origin)