Why do Wav and Flac Files Sound Different?
This article is from 2016, so outfits like JRiver may have developed workarounds for the metadata/sound quality issues sussed out below. Inquiring minds want to know.
Why Do WAV And FLAC Files Sound Different?
"Based on these results, we attempted to pinpoint which section of the metadata might be responsible. Since the cover art file associated with the metadata is the largest contributor to the metadata header size, we began by examining the effect of deleting cover art prior to the WAV-to-FLAC-to-WAV conversion protocol. This proved fortuitous, as our first suspicion proved correct."
this is ludacris wav and flac sound identical. flac is completely lossless it uses an on the fly decompression wav does not contain metadata while flac does there are absolutely 0 advantages with wav. we have been dealing with computer audio servers and streamers fo over 10 years
Dave and Troy audio Intellect NJ Streaming specialists
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Um, beg to differ. You are correct in that the existence of album art or metadata should make no difference to a properly behaving streamer. Perhaps @audiotroy you are conflating album art with metadata? I just converted a file from FLAC to WAV and it had artist, album, year of release, etc. but the album art did not make it over. I found this interesting article on album art however, and it seems this is a rather new capability for WAV files. Important to note that some metadata is required for WAV and FLAC as it describes the data in the audio data container that explains how the stream of bytes should be interpreted. Floating point vs. integer, number of channels, sample rate, etc. is all necessary for WAV files and part of the file format definition you may read more about here. There is a second, optional part of metadata associated with human legible, descriptive tags. Not actually needed to play a file, but certainly needed to organize a music library. |
It may help to think of an audio file as having 3 parts:
Each of these chunks of information are entirely separate in the file, so as @audiotroy points out, the existence or absence of album art should make zero difference to the DAC. The byte stream presented to the DAC should be identical regardless of optional metadata or indeed file format (FLAC, WAV, ALAC, etc.). The one possible/plausible area I can see FLAC vs. WAV causing a difference is with poor streamers that don’t implement decompression (FLAC or ALAC) with adequate buffering and that somehow the time taken to decompress each chunk is affecting the rate at which samples are presented to the DAC. IMHO, this is possible, but certainly signs of poor design, not a feature of the file format. If there IS a difference in a file because it has or does not have album art that would be a significant functional error/bug. To end with a metaphor, imagine a vinyl record. The metadata is the text on the label. The cover art is on the cardboard sleeve, and the byte stream is the music in the groves. If you can hear a difference in an album because of the sleeve art you really have surpassed the boundaries of human capabilities. |
