The Real Reason to Rip CDs to WAV vs. FLAC - SoundStage! Real Hi-Fi (Ep:51)

That video was well received back then—and it’s still viewed often today. Most people agreed with what Doug had to say about the two formats, but there were some people who put forth a good argument about why to rip to WAV instead of FLAC or some other lossless format. In this video, Doug explores their argument.

#audiophile #hifi #stereo

[phreak]

Flac is decoded into uncompressed BUFFERED bits in memory before it is streamed to a DAC. The bits from a wav source and a flac source are an identical PCM 16-bit 44.1khz before they get converted from digital to analog in the DAC. Anyone that says there is a difference in sound stage or anything else is purely false.

[utubeandydent]

Wav is good for editing audio but that is the only reason I would use it now as big files.

[DetroitRockCitizen]

I rip to Wav for one reason, TIME. Ripping to FLAC is a two step process. It's actually ripping to a temporary WAV file and then converting that file to FLAC. When I am ripping a lot of CDs in one setting, which I do more often than not, I like to hear the results first. I then convert to FLAC at at the moment or I wait until I have more time. It also gives me more flexibility when I edit the ID3 tag or whatever its called on the FLAC,

[ZeldagigafanMatthew]

I think "storage is cheap" is a bad argument for uncompressed. FLAC is as close to "free additional space" as we can get without compromising quality. Sure, FLAC may use more power to decompress, but same can be said for uncompressed in respect to the time it takes to load into memory.

[MrRickytuk]

Wav files can't hold much Metadata which is important for music. Wav was developed to capture uncompressed sound but FLAC was designed with music more specifically. Use FLAC.

[kylehazachode]

I used to rip wav exclusively. But then I learned that some bands would hide easter egg tracks in the pregap space on their cds. Most ripping software that supports flac will preserve this pregap and the cue sheet will be properly adjusted for the pregap. When you rip to wav, the pregap data is ignored. Anyways to access a pregap easter egg song or track on a cd player, you have to be playing the current track and then hold rewind and it'll rewind past 0:00 into the negative where the pregap song is stored.

[lawadelante]

Very clear explanation thanks for expressing it in such a manner that is easily received by youth.

[paladin]

It really annoys me that someone decided it wasn't cool to burn CDs anymore.

[kaustix]

I think its that some people believe the uncompressing the flac file can change the sound. Personally very much doubt that and dont worry much.

[noturnleftunstoned]

When you are making a lossless file copy for a friend / other system etc from WAV to WAV you lose your tags, while with FLAC they just transfer and stay inside the file.

[PaulEldridge]

Thanks Doug and, yes, "this content helped". What I got from was a good dose of "relax, everything is going to OK". And, turns out - for me, it is. Take care. (I'll just play a bit more CSNY...).

[gwine]

I am in the process of re-ripping a lot of my CDs. I did a few in WAV and found that it took about 3 or 4 times longer per CD. That was enough to make me go to FLAC.

[beepover]

Been ripping with eac to wav for 15 plus years. Glad I made that choice. Storage is much cheaper than 15 yrs ago. With compression you need to uncompress it and just another step for a player to process. I my experience using flacs I find the music is exactly the same except during listening there seems to be more artifacts or delays in some flacs files.

[StevenSheaffer]

No, compression does NOT necessarily mean missing data. You can compress a file in either a LOSSLESS way or a LOSSY way.

In simple terms, LOSSY compression is done by using the same data storage scheme, but omitting some of the data. LOSSLESS compression is done by keeping all of the data, but storing it in a more efficient way. For audio, the standard uniform storage scheme that you ultimately feed into the audio engine uses the same number of bits to store each audio sample, so that number needs to be big enough to store the largest possible value. That is, every sample takes up enough memory to cover the entire dynamic range of the recording. However, most samples are usually nowhere near the dynamic limit and have much lower values that do not require all those bits to store. So a large amount of the memory in the file isn't typically needed. One form of lossless compression is to squeeze out all of this unused memory by storing each sample using only the number or bits required to store that particular value. Then when read, it is expanded back into the uniform scheme before being fed into the audio engine. This works because it eliminates a lot more unused memory than it needs to add to keep track of where each sample begins and ends in the data stream. Then it uses this additional information to decode the file and expand it back into the uniform scheme. The data that comes out is exactly the same as in the uncompressed file -- it was just stored in a more efficient way. No missing data.

[younusyounus]

Good review but Can I ripping flac to wav and get same ripping cd to wav quality ?

[ARAMP]

I started ripping all my CDs to .wav but with FLAC you can store metadata easier.

[FurQ]

WAV Files are identical to FLAC the only difference is FLAC uncompreses to WAV on the fly during playback apart from that the zeros and ones are no different, it would be mad to use WAV unless your PC is so old that it isn't powerful enough to playback FLAC but your PC would have to be from the 90s for that to be a concern.

[MuzikSonics]

In most systems WAV vs FLAC sound the same. In higher / ultra - high end systems with very high resolution capabilities a difference can be heard.

[mrglasses]

WAV doesn't support metadata, which should rule it out IMO. I'd use AIFF for uncompressed audio, but I just use ALAC and 256 kbps AAC for my phone.

[timramich]

I actually use FLAC for my movies. Blu-ray and newer come most of the time with lossless audio. 7.1 and 24 bits and a long movie can drive a WAV file over the 4 GB limit. And compressing multichannel tracks saves a huge amount of space. The savings are WAY more than you encounter with stereo music. a 16 bit 5.1 track willd typically be between 900 and 1, 300 kbps. Raw bit rate is 4, 608 kbps. 24 bits jumps up to low 3, 000 kbps where raw bit rate would be 6, 912 kbps. For 7.1 stuff you're looking at typically under 4, 500 kbps down from 9, 216 kbps raw. I do not keep the DTS and Dolby because they include a lossy core and the entire bit rate is usually way more than what I can get with FLAC. I don't care about the Atmos or :X height metadata.