WAV versus FLAC

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.

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....

Ok, I've done this experiment with at least 20 audiophiles and PCs ranging from Pentium 4 to Core i5 (laptops, desktops, Wi-Fi, USB, PCI, Squeeze Server, DB Power amp, Foobar, J. River Media Center, etc.), and they did not know what's playing (blind A-B test). Somehow they all preferred WAV. All had a hard time choosing between Monkey's and Apple lossless, and all disliked FLAC because, in their opinion, it sounds thin and with unnatural/mechanical top-end.

Interestingly enough, I've recently talked to someone who has a famous audiophile recording studio. He also dislikes FLAC because of the same above mentioned reasons.

If someone around here has the same experience and has a remedy, I’d be more than happy to experiment and report back. For now if lossless is a must, I am sticking with Monkey’s Audio, but that is only for not so good recorded material.

Best,
Alex Peychev

You need to rip using the right ripper (dbpoweramp). There is absolutely no difference between WAV and FLAC. I purposely bought a large hard drive to rip everything in WAV as I am a very fussy audiophile. I spent the better part of a month ripping the albums in WAV then FLAC, then did extensive, exhaustive comparisons between the two. Result, ZERO difference, no difference, zilch, nada, any other way I can say it? Anyone claiming anything different may know something I dont. I had no intention on using FLAC, but when doing the comparo, why fuss with WAV, it wont hold tags and uses more space, for what?

By the same token I also compared heavily in AIFF, again, ZERO difference.

As has been pointed out, WAV does not support metadata. This makes it a royal PITA to deal with if you need to restore from a backup, or move files, or want to share files. I refuse to use WAV for this reason alone. As far as one sounding warmer and the other brighter, I have never heard anything remotely like that myself, and find it very hard to believe that it actually occurs this way (I do not find it hard to believe that someone believes that's what they're hearing though). My own experience is that file types don't make that much difference (if we are talking about full-resolution, uncompressed formats - AIFF vs WAV vs FLAC etc.). The same files ripped with different software have certainly sounded different to me on comparison, but I don't think it would be a warm vs. bright kind of difference. That's one for the tabloids I think.