Why do Wav and Flac Files Sound Different?

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.

@bolong I do not know for every case. What I have seen when I have bought music from Qobuz is that they provide an image that you can see in the FOLDER where the music is and when I have retagged every SONG FILE in order to add information important for me, sometimes there was the same image in each song file. The same applies in the case of music that I have bought from other online shops (Presto, Highresaudio, etc.)

For each song the cover art and all metadata is "separated" from "music" in each MUSIC FILE: for understanding this, it helped me very much to realize that all the information (music, song name, duration, composer, singer, orchestra, group, ...) is a very long row of 1s and 0s but similar to a very long train, the 1s and 0s for music are in one big wagon, and metadata goes in one or two or three small wagons. Following this idea, WAV only admits one metadata wagon whilst FLAC, ALAC, AIFF admit all the wagons. Metadata wagons can be full, empty or something in between

Please, this is not "scientific" at all, but this idea helped me very much. I hope it can be useful for you and not confusing.