Wav vs FLAC files

The debate rages on between FLAC and WAV files. Paul jumps right in.

[sayhellotovin]

flac decompression is a trivial task for any modern computer and by this I mean pretty much any device down to a £5 Raspberry Pi Zero. For a system admin like myself, the suggestion that a system would output different data to an audio device or emit "noise" that wasn't there before because it had to decompress the payload is hilarious.
Wav is pcm data in a file container, flac is the same but in a compressed container. The flac format also supports tagged metadata in the file header as standard which wav does not, imagine having a large wav library with no tags and dealing with cue files, equally hilarious. I wouldn't buy a file format that can't support editable metadata.

[AngryChineseWoman]

Decoding flac is nothing for a modern CPU, I highly doubt it adds "computer noise" vs wav

[youuuuuuuuuuutube]

FLAC is just like a ZIP file, you get exactly the original content with not even 1 bit being different. People hearing the difference is just Placebo effect.

[Phil_fandbethere]

I can't hear any difference between FLAC & WAV, not to say others can't, but I'm more than happy with FLAC 😀

[richardt]

Storage is cheap, but it's not infinite! Compression to FLAC loses nothing, changes nothing, affects nothing, and there is no reason whatsoever to keep WAV rather than use FLAC. When you start storing over 100, 000 hi-resolution tracks (as I have) then you realise very quickly that uncompressed WAV is NOT the way to go, and that the compressed BUT IDENTICAL FLAC option is the only sensible option. I have a 3TB NAS drive, and if I used WAV it would be over capacity already. There is no difference - none - in the sound quality of the same file stored as FLAC or WAV. It's time to stop confusing compressed with lossy. Lossless is lossless, whether it is FLAC or WAV.

[mshadley]

FLAC is nice when we take our music with us on a portable device. Not only for space issues, but for metadata as well. I've done A-B comparisons and can't hear any difference. Maybe that because I'm kind of old or just don't have high enough resolution in my home system. For that, maybe I should be grateful 🙂

[SteveWille]

If there is a difference in sound between FLAC and equivalent WAV sound, there is a problem somewhere else in the system. The reason to use FLAC, even when storage is so cheap, is to make room for DSD files. 😁

[hubert]

Sorry Paul, but for me there is no difference. Maybe because I don’t use cable lifters 🫢. Storage size may not matter that much, but metadata handling is crucial. In terms of metadata tagging both WAV and AIFF suck. Tagging FLAC and ALAC is a breeze. Concerning computer horsepower for decoding FLAC, that must be for a modern CPU, in other words: nothing. And by the way, both FLAC and WAV are codecs containing PCM files. So even WAV needs to be decoded by the CPU before PCM can be played.

[blekenbleu]

Done correctly, decompressing FLAC should provoke fewer IO operations than loading the same music from WAV,
and IO operations provoke strongest digital noise.

[timothystockman]

I'm going to disagree on this one. The CPU resources to decode flac are trivial. There's no reason to double the length of my file copies and operations just because I want WAV, the FLAC files are large enough! What you're missing is that files on the hard drive are not a static thing, they must be backed up and maintained. This is what takes the real bandwidth. FLAC has some built-in features which help with file maintenance, such as a CRC of the audio at the time of encoding. This allows one to scan one's collection periodically looking for errors.

[ThinkingBetter]

Nowadays it’s trivial for modern silicon to unpack FLAC format and the DAC will play perfectly the same when it gets exactly the same data. Processing noise is not an audible thing…except in some old PC from a couple of decades or more ago. The SNR of modern DACs is way way above human hearing abilities with typically 120dB, so this is not a real topic. Show me a setup with FLAC de-compression represented on the DAC analog output as a noise residual exceeding the same track played as WAV. No, any modern CPU or SOC runs much more code doing stuff for the GUI and overall operating system stack. Unfortunately, software processing audio can have some bugs and perhaps that can cause a difference, but nowadays that would be unusual. Modern data processing is highly reliable and modern processing is not yielding audible noise on the analog path, unless bad engineering is involved.

[qbabyrolfe]

Why I use FLAC:
1. Decoding FLAC is trivial. IBM XT computers don't sweat doing it. It doesn't introduce comper-ish noise into the stream. The stream is bit for bit identical so where is the noise? Any hardware that has to "work" at decoding FLAC (if you can even find any) isn't worth having.
2. I have a large music collection (10KCDs + several hundred DVDs/BRs.) It's close to 3TB in size as FLAC files. Since it's mostly classical, it compresses very well. (I've had some disks that compress 84%...mono piano). Converting to WAV would increase the size to well over 7TB.
3. FLAC's meta-data/tagging schema is infinitely superior to that of WAV files. It's simple, easy to work with and universally supported.

So the real question is, why would you double+ the size of your music collection and use a poor/non-existent metadata/tagging system for the exact same quality of sound??

[asx]

This is the second video Paul has made that does flac a disservice. When flac is decompressed it is bit for bit an exact copy of the CD. Perhaps, perhaps there is some argument to say that your streamer doing the decompression/decoding might get things wrong but units like that surely have to be very uncommon these days and I bet it takes relatively as much cpu power to read a WAV as it does to convert a flac.

[Taffy]

I highly doubt they sound different. Placebo effect.

[Crossfire]

Advantages of using FLAC:
1. FLAC is smaller than WAV.
2. FLAC can be tagged with metadata better than WAV.
3. The sound of FLAC is identical to the sound of WAV.
4. Decoding a FLAC is nothing for today's PCs.
We're no longer in the 1980's!
Digital audio is mathematical. The information code is the same in FLAC as it is in WAV, it's just archived to reduce its size to about 66%.

[DN]

Space and bandwidth. You can always convert all of your FLAC files to WAV so you don't have to decompress while playing. It's your gear that's degrading the sound, not the storage format.

[Valery_AVV]

No computer noise is added when reading flac. ) That's first of all.
Secondly, waw is also a packaging, and requires decoding, just like flac. That is, we can encode music to flac, we can encode to waw, but both have to be decoded when listening.
Good luck, Paul. )
Sorry about my terrible English.

[paolovolante]

You're right, but what about the metadata. Wav sucks and AIF is a little bit better, but nothing if compared to Flac. And if storage is not an issue anymore (I agree with you) so it is for the very simple computing effort necessary to unfold the Flac into PCM.
Not counting that a regular computer can unfold the whole file BEFORE playing it in a very short time.

[JeffMudrick]

Any difference in audibility is imagined. Concerns about computer horsepower are as outdated as those about storage and bandwidth. Certainly no reason to be concerned.

[mark]

The difference in sound quality between wav and flac will be dependent on hardware and software factors. FLAC was specifically designed for easy decompression over 20 years ago. Today's processors will have no difficulty decompressing flac. RAM buffer memory has improved. Also, MPD has evolved and improved over the years, with better buffer design. Once flac is decompressed into a buffer, it's the same data as wav. If you haven't recently compared wav and flac, listen again.