Why do Wav and Flac Files Sound Different?

@aldnorab You are opening another big and old discussion.

On one side, when hard disk space was not such a a commodity as it is today, people tried to reduce the size of the music files as much as possible. That implies the use of algorithms to "fold" them.

But also implies the use of algorithms to "unfold" them just in the fly while or just before being played. This implies the use of processing capacity of the computer ant that means noise.

Again, in the "old" times, this operation could demand a slightly significative "effort" for the computer. Today you can say that this "noise" is absolutely negligible. It will depend on your computer (streamer, server or whatever)

If you are curious, play the same file / track as FLAC level 0 and level 8 and trust your ears: I think you can use any transcoder to do ver both FLAC files.

And my advice: once you have tested this in YOUR equipment and with YOUR ears, forget it: there will always be people saying that they hear the difference in their equipment and there will always be people saying that with the computer of such equipment is "scientifically" imposible to feel any difference.

By the way, I am working from the start with .wav files here. Everything in the Quobuz "Download Store" that is "CD quality" comes as a ,wav file.

Thank you @corente for the answer. Guess if FLAC was developed today there would be fewer levels. 

 I would like to know what format the major studios supply streaming and download companies with. 

Thanks,

aldnorab

I have never streamed, so this may be a dumb question, but in the case of Quobuz, for instance, which is the outift from which I download, is every single file fetched for play tagged with an image of cover art? Is that cover art separate from the music file - or is it "infolded" in the file?

@aldnorab I do not know and it is not important regarding quality of the audio file.

A "song" can be transcoded as many time as you want and no "musical" information is gonna be missed (remember we are in digital world and information means 1s and 0s)

This is assuming that you transcode among lossless formats: ALAC, FLAC, AIFF, WAV and any other: so streaming company can receive a WAV file from the majors and transcode it to FLAC as it is the most "commercial" one

The only thing that could be lost is metadata (like image, composer, group, orchestra, year, ....)

Regarding your question, I guess that they supply FLAC because is universal: can be played in almost any system and has a very good capacity for metadata. Anyway the streaming company can receive a WAV file from the majors and transcode it to FLAC as it is the most "commercial" one. But honestly, I do not know.