WAV versus FLAC

However, recently, I have heard from a person whose opinion I respect highly that sound from WAV files is "warmer" and that from FLAC files is "brighter".

I will have to agree with that person because to my ears and with my audio components I get the same result. And it does not matter what compression level is selected in the FLAC encoder.

IMO again, Monkey's Audio and Apple Lossless are superior and much closer to uncompressed WAV, but they still lack the top-end information (air) of uncompressed WAV which still sounds best to me.

Best,
Alex Peychev

The placebo effect is the greatest enemy to the audiophile...

Well,everyone hears what they hear.

I wish to thank everybody who shared his or her aural observations as well as to these who shared with me their knowledge of the basics of engineering and psychology.

I cannot experiment (yet) as I do not have yet the music server - blame go to Alex with his extraordinary optical storage based front end I am 99.9% close to decision to get Diamond from Sonic Science - in moment Neal will let me know if he can implement some engineering "toys" I asked him to implement. I just want to enjoy HiRez downlaods and they take a space. I know a little about bits (other then that these bits bite sometimes) and eager to learn relevant info. Thank you

It is possible that different software handles different file formats differently and the results are not exactly the same.

However if this were the case it would be the programming of the software used to produce or read the file formats that is different, and not the format, and the results could be different in each specific case regarding which is better or preferred.

Format does not assure sound quality. That is evident with records, tapes, CDs, you name it. Different versions of the same material in the same format sound different because of the way the recording is produced despite being all of the same format.

In the case of flac versus .wav, I would expect if everything is working well, and the resolution of the files are the same, there should be no inherent difference in sound quality resulting from format alone.