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