WAV vs Flac

[BillWit]

I am just starting to load my CD's, and have always thought that WAV was the best alternative. However I have also seen suggestions that FLAC is a better format for archiving and playing. Interested in hearing viewpoints. Thanks, Bill

[garym]

Re: WAV vs Flac

I am just starting to load my CD's, and have always thought that WAV was the best alternative. However I have also seen suggestions that FLAC is a better format for archiving and playing. Interested in hearing viewpoints. Thanks, Bill

both are lossless. but FLAC has a standard method of tagging recognized by all players that handle FLAC. WAV tagging is hit and miss and depends highly on which player. And of course FLAC takes up about 1/2 the space (and it is not just storage space...depending on what sort of player one is using, the streaming of the FLAC file puts less strain on your local network as well if you are using something like a Squeezebox (like me) or SONOS, etc. If one thinks he has *better* sound with WAV vs FLAC, something is broken with your server/player in my opinion. Much of the WAV preference dates to the olden days when there were mp3 files and not much choice for LOSSLESS other than WAV. I use FLAC (about 70,000 files and I'm about 1/2 way through ripping my CDs).

you might find this useful:

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Lossless_comparison

[pablogm123]

Re: WAV vs Flac

I am just starting to load my CD's, and have always thought that WAV was the best alternative. However I have also seen suggestions that FLAC is a better format for archiving and playing. Interested in hearing viewpoints. Thanks, Bill

Always choose FLAC/WAVPACK/APE/whatever rather WAV.

A wav file:
-Doesn't offer itself any method to detect corruption. FLAC/WAVPACK/APE formats can store a hash of audio stream to verify the integrity of content stored.
-Doesn't offer any standarized way of tagging.
-It is bigger, storing the same information which you could compress losslessly into FLAC/WAVPACK/APE.

My personal choice of lossless codec currently is wavpack:
-The command line program can handle easily and natively raw PCM files. Very convenient for compressing my Saturn/PlayStation/Mega-CD images once splitted into data part and audio part without using sox to create a .wav file with header, as intermediate step, which can be handled by an audio compressor.
-hh mode compress a little more than FLAC 8 (nothing significative anyway, 3/4/5 MB on a typical album), and compression speed is good.

[garym]

Re: WAV vs Flac

A wav file:
-Doesn't offer itself any method to detect corruption. FLAC/WAVPACK/APE formats can store a hash of audio stream to verify the integrity of content stored.

good point. I'd forgotten to list that benefit. And for the OP, this is automatically done (it doesn't require any special setting when you rip your CDs).

[thexfile]

Re: WAV vs Flac

I like using FLAC because it's more compatible with different music players and flac is a music industry standard. :smile2:

[Mike48]

Re: WAV vs Flac

As others have said, FLAC is more compact and supports tagging. Some players are said to give better sound quality when receiving WAV than FLAC. In that case, many of the better music library/streaming programs will transcode FLAC to WAV as they send it. That way, you can get the best of both worlds.