Martin Brown wrote:

Standard approach for audio as with JPEG images is to keep all the
intermediate working files in some lossless format like FLAC.

Thanks. On the subject of compression, the bulk of the files I'm working
with are m4a recordings of a male speaking voice and they have a huge and
impractical dynamic range. I was resigned to going through them (and there
are a lot) manually adjusting the levels, but could applying compression
achieve a decent quality result? I do need to retain the clarity and
unmuddyness they have at present. I've very little experience with
compression of audio files and would be grateful for any thoughts.

Thanks.