The MP3 is finally...dead!

And yet for all practical purposes MP3 is indistinguishable from Redbook CD by a panel of expert listeners in controlled blind tests.

And what does that statement really mean? Yeah, if the source files burned to the Redbook CD were mp3 to begin with playing an mp3 directly or burning to CD is indistinguishable. So what? If burning a lossless file to CD you certainly can distinguish that from an mp3!

Not to put too fine a point on it but there are MP3s and MP3s

I’ll grant you there are some very high sample rate mp3’s that sound "good". Nevertheless, "lossy is lossy" :)

....would anyone like to tell me if flac is as good as uncompressed wav files ....

Yes. Meaning the same wav file (uncompressed) when compressed to flac is definitely "as good". In terms of disk space, flac is preferred because it takes less of it. In terms of sound playback quality, the same, however, it should be noted that the player used for flac must "uncompress" during playback, so a theoretical advantage should go to wav. That said, if you first uncompress the flac to wav and compare the two wavs, they are usually identical (as reported by windows properties, albeit *may* differ by a byte or so). 

See this thread where this was discussed at length:

https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/flac-vs-wav?highlight=wav%2Bvs%2Bflac