WAV v. FLAC

T

theDreamer

2[H]4U
Joined
Oct 11, 2006
Messages
2,513
Either one better than the other? I currently have about 30 CDs on backed up on my computer in .WAV, but just got EAC to test FLAC. First couple of songs I do not hear anything really different between WAV, FLAC, or the CD. Maybe with much better hardware/gear I could, but what do others think?
WAV seems to be supported by more devices if I just wanted to throw my music onto something, but every place I read about audio quality, it is always FLAC first.
 
Well they are both lossless formats, so if you ripped them in lossless there should be no difference.

Of course, that's just common sense talking, I don't know a whole lot about audio so take it with a grain of salt.
 
Both lossless, theoretically makes no sonic difference. Wav is not compressed therefore larger file size, flac is compressed, therefore smaller size footprint.
Wav is a container, Flac is a lossless compression, that is, it will be decoded back to it's uncompressed state without loosing information.
 
I think I got it: Could be yes, could be no, could be maybe... but that depends.
 
I like .WMA lossless, personally. Much more playback support out there and FLAC's kind of a pain in the arse to deal with. I'm an audiophile and have found .wma lossless to be my holy grail.
 
Well it looks like I am just going to stick with WAV then, space is no concern to me, but having the best quality is.
Brahmzy, what do you use to go from CD to .WMA lossless? Are you able to setup CD art, artists, song titles easily?
Thanks everyone.
 
Mr. Wolf said:
I think I got it: Could be yes, could be no, could be maybe... but that depends.
Click to expand...


actually no.

From a pure Math standpoint. Both WAV and FLAC are the SAME at the end. WAV files, as was stated, is the uncompressed native 16b/44khz signal. FLAC on the other hand is the same thing except compressed without any of the information itself tossed away. Like a ZIP file, nothing is lost. It is just compressed (hence the term LOSSLESS ;) ).

So in the end, they are the EXACT same. If you hear any difference, PLACEBO ;)
 
Mr. Wolf said:
I think I got it: Could be yes, could be no, could be maybe... but that depends.
Click to expand...
Any FLAC can be decompressed to a state where the original checksum of the audio data is identical to that of the original WAV. In some cases, the file size won't be identical because the encoder may discard non-standard header data, but the audio checksums will be identical if the encoder performed its task successfully. So long as the encoder can discern the WAV header, it will encode correctly every time.

theDreamer said:
Well it looks like I am just going to stick with WAV then, space is no concern to me, but having the best quality is.
Click to expand...
The quality between FLAC, WAV, TAK, APE, WMA Lossless, Apple Lossless, and so on and so forth are identical. There are zero differences in playback quality because the audio data is identical when decompressed for output. WAV offers no quality advantages over any other lossless format.

There may be various reasons to stick with WAV, but potential differences in quality is not one of them: there are and can be no potential differences in audio quality.

 
theDreamer said:
Well it looks like I am just going to stick with WAV then, space is no concern to me, but having the best quality is.
Brahmzy, what do you use to go from CD to .WMA lossless? Are you able to setup CD art, artists, song titles easily?
Thanks everyone.
Click to expand...

I just use Windows media to rip a CD at the .wma lossless level. It's in the ripping properties. Very simple, clean and built in.

I can absolutely hear a difference in degradation when listening to a 320 .mp3. I cannot for the life of me tell a difference between .wma lossless, flac, wav etc. The thing I like about .wma is it's so easy to rip, maintain album art and it usually plays in any device (car CD player) that plays mp3s, AND it does a good job with the compression.
 
phide said:
Any FLAC can be decompressed to a state where the original checksum of the audio data is identical to that of the original WAV. In some cases, the file size won't be identical because the encoder may discard non-standard header data, but the audio checksums will be identical if the encoder performed its task successfully. So long as the encoder can discern the WAV header, it will encode correctly every time.


The quality between FLAC, WAV, TAK, APE, WMA Lossless, Apple Lossless, and so on and so forth are identical. There are zero differences in playback quality because the audio data is identical when decompressed for output. WAV offers no quality advantages over any other lossless format.

There may be various reasons to stick with WAV, but potential differences in quality is not one of them: there are and can be no potential differences in audio quality.

Click to expand...

Sorry, I did not mean by going with FLAC or any other lossless codec would be bad, just saying if WAV is equal then I am not worried about re-doing my copies into something else. Thanks for all the info everyone, did help clear a lot of thing sup.
 
Yep, I recommend buying your digital downloads in wma lossless from a place like music giants. mp3's suck a lot of the time. sometimes, I can't tell which is better, but you can always tell a difference, and with most tracks people can tell a difference between lossless/uncompressed and lossy.

Like they said there is no quality difference, but for people who are space and speed whores, then they'd prefer lossy over lossless, since lossless can't acheive the same compression ratios, but it's ridiculous to go to extremes like mp3's especially 128kbps and less. WMA lossless is a perfectly happy medium. no loss in quality.

I wish all pc games would use lossless audio. sometimes lossy is ok for certain games, but in dmc4 for the pc, anyone could tell how flat the audio sounded, there were no highs and lows. I guess the super hi-res textures didn't leave much room for good audio quality.
 
I don't know why there is any debate. The only format widely supported on the internet for lossless audio is FLAC. Every software player (that is worth anything and isn't that POS iTunes) can play it, as with 90% of portable players. There should be no reason to choose WAV, as its just going to take up more space with no difference in quality. EAC is THE holy grail for ripping and encoding as FLAC so you are right on the money there.
 
criccio said:
I don't know why there is any debate. The only format widely supported on the internet for lossless audio is FLAC. Every software player (that is worth anything and isn't that POS iTunes) can play it, as with 90% of portable players. There should be no reason to choose WAV, as its just going to take up more space with no difference in quality. EAC is THE holy grail for ripping and encoding as FLAC so you are right on the money there.
Click to expand...

What if space is no issue though? I can drag and drop WAV onto anything (minus iPods which I give no care to), and almost any player supports WAV with no issues.
WAV v. FLAC seems to be no issue in terms of quality, the only factor is one takes up a bit less space than the other.
 
theDreamer said:
What if space is no issue though? I can drag and drop WAV onto anything (minus iPods which I give no care to), and almost any player supports WAV with no issues.
WAV v. FLAC seems to be no issue in terms of quality, the only factor is one takes up a bit less space than the other.
Click to expand...

Generally, when you have two things and only one of them has a downside, you go with the other. :D
 
<-- Loves my IRiver X5.. plays FLAC natively! :D 60 GB worth of FLAC on that player...
 
figgie said:
<-- Loves my IRiver X5.. plays FLAC natively! :D 60 GB worth of FLAC on that player...
Click to expand...

Kinda OT question, but are you sure you didn't mean iAudio X5? I did a google search of iRiver X5 as I am looking for a new portable player, and the only hits I got was for the iAudio X5.
 
You are correct criccio, now you are making me want to recreate my entire collection with FLAC. I was doing a test CD last night, and it was going to take 1.5 hours for one CD, but less space is nice and in the end might be the better thing.
 
criccio said:
1.5 hours? I rip to FLAC with EAC and it take 15 minutes...
Click to expand...

Hmmm, will have to check my settings then. It got about half way through the CD and it took about 30 minutes just for those songs. It seems to create a .WAV file first then makes the FLAC file.
 
Brahmzy said:
I can absolutely hear a difference in degradation when listening to a 320 .mp3.
Click to expand...
no2censorship said:
mp3's suck a lot of the time. sometimes, I can't tell which is better, but you can always tell a difference, and with most tracks people can tell a difference between lossless/uncompressed and lossy.
Click to expand...
Bah.

criccio said:
1.5 hours? I rip to FLAC with EAC and it take 15 minutes...
Click to expand...
Some drives are ridiculously slow at ripping. I use LiteOn drives exclusively, and they're just horrendously slow. Doing test & copy for checksum matching, which isn't a bad idea despite AccurateRip, doesn't really help matters.

Still, if a CD rip is taking an hour+, odds are some settings may be proving problematic.
 
Does Vista x64 / WMP have native support for FLAC? Do FLAC files retain album cover art etc.?
 
WMP can support FLAC via an output filter, such as CoreFLAC. FLAC uses the Vorbis Comments tagging system, and supports album artwork, but some of the tags are somewhat different than ID3v2. It'll take some adjusting to transition from WMA Lossless, for instance, to FLAC, but it's nothing major.
 
One thing I remember when ripping the CD to FLAC last night was it was ripping at 1.2X speed it said. I am using my LG HD-DVD/Blu-ray drive to do the ripping. Also, how do you get album cover/artwork? Does EAC load it automatically into the folder when done ripping? It picked up my album titles, song titles, and artist nicely, but not sure about album artwork.
 
Try dbpoweramp ( http://www.dbpoweramp.com/ ) with the batch ripper plugin (at the bottom of the page). It gets you the artwork, does error checking with databases on the net, sorts the music into folders nicely. And you don't have to push a button.
I know EAC does many of these too, but dbpoweramp made it absolutely hassle free. The only thing i had to do was wash the cds and add album cover manually for some strange old albums.

These last weeks i have ripped around 400 cds to FLAC and this program just sorted it out.
 
criccio said:
Kinda OT question, but are you sure you didn't mean iAudio X5? I did a google search of iRiver X5 as I am looking for a new portable player, and the only hits I got was for the iAudio X5.
Click to expand...


sorry yes,

Those two always confuse me :)
 
Floruro said:
dbpoweramp
Click to expand...

I migrated from E.A.C. to dbpoweramp a few months ago. I'm never looking back. It does everything better, and the rips are still secure, with sector re-reads, write codes, database verification, etc.

Best of all, it offers the option to rip straight to ALAC (which happens to be my codec of choice), in one simplified step. And it verifies the encoding when finished, something even iTunes doesnt do! I've had wav files imported into iTunes turn into half-songs, because the encoding added silence to half a track. Very rare, but I've seen it happen, and its annoying.
So it basically verifies everything, and much quicker than E.A.C. could ever hope to do.

When you're ripping 20+ albums a week, you really start to appreciate such things :D
 
I have to ask, why is WMP such a horrible media player? It seems to fit my needs perfectly, minus a handful of files that I got VLC to deal with.
 
no2censorship said:
Yep, I recommend buying your digital downloads in wma lossless from a place like music giants. mp3's suck a lot of the time. sometimes, I can't tell which is better, but you can always tell a difference, and with most tracks people can tell a difference between lossless/uncompressed and lossy.
Click to expand...


Here we go again. :rolleyes: No, most people can not tell a difference at all.

I challenge you to use foobar abx testing with lossless format of your choice and 320kb/s mp3 and then post here your results. Do the test at least 20 times to reduce chance of lucky guesses.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top