When I have seen people listing their systems lately

Mapman, why did you change from ripping to wav to start ripping to flac?

I started with .wav several years back.   I liked .wav because it was native CD format.   Tagging and artwork was basic and limited but sufficient with Logitech Squeeze system.   

 I investigated making the change about a year or so back  as part of testing out Plex as a replacement for Logitech Squeeze system.     Newer software like Plex tends to have more features that can make use of more extended and flexible tagging. 

That trend continues to evolve.  .wav is basic and limited with tags. 

So i experimented with FLAC at first versus wav to see if I heard any difference.   I did not so I proceeded to batch convert all my files to flac and start using Plex.  I still use Squeeze with Flac as well but that system is legacy and no new versions or features coming out.  So I will leave it behind eventually.

 I use Plex and Squeeze both currently with flac.   No difference in sound quality  that I can detect and Plex + flac works well, even with the free version of Plex.    I deleted my archived .wav files after a while once I felt sure I would have no need to go back.

I have pretty good ears and a resolving system I think and can detect most any change I make like with wires, power, etc.   But I detect no difference really between FLAC and .wav.   Nor should there be if things done right technically.   FLAC is compressed but lossless and system must convert to PCM  (.wav format essentially) to play, so as long as all is working well nothing to fear based on my experience.

My advice is take it one step at a time and see what works for you.   There could be differences case by case for many reasons.  No two people or systems work the same, so you gotta do what works best for you.
 

Thanks Map, I appreciate the prompt and thorough response.

I ran into the same situation as mapman.  I had all my CD's ripped as wav.  Due to the non-existent tagging options in WAV, I was forced to manually add each CD into the windows media player database.  Basically rip a CD, load windows media player, add the new CD folder to the library, and use the lookup to "tag" the folder as an album.  

This worked fine once my collection was ripped.  But, what I was doing is storing the data in a database that only Windows Media Player could use instead of storing the data in the music files.

One day my boot/OS drive died on me which was no big deal since my music files were on another drive.  I got a replacement drive, and re-loaded windows.  I then launched Windows Media Player and added my music folder to the library.  Instead having a thousand nice and neat albums, I had a single album with 15K songs.  When my boot drive died, I also lost the Windows Media Player database.   All the work was lost.

Yes, in the end it is best to have all "static" tags and album art embedded in the file and use a open and non-proprietary file format like FLAC rather than any vendor proprietary one. That keeps you from being setback should you choose to use something new or different to play.

It also makes life easy to restore your library from a similar backup in case the drive dies or other disaster strikes. I’ve been through that too. So many more things can go wrong or change if music and all related info is not all stored in the same file. Its best to store teh most important info that will not change much if over over time in the file ("static" tags like title, artist, album art, etc.) and then let the various software used to play pull in other supplemental information that may change over time via live web connection dynamically, things like linking to external resources like allmusic for artist bios or album reviews, lyrics, wikipedia articles or any related content that evolves grows, changes and gets better hopefully over time.

Companies like Apple Microsoft and the others all do whatever they can get away with to try to lock customers into their systems and believe me Apple in particular can get away with a lot these days. Used to be more Microsoft.