Flac is decoded into uncompressed BUFFERED bits in memory before it is streamed to a DAC. The bits from a wav source and a flac source are an identical PCM 16-bit 44.1khz before they get converted from digital to analog in the DAC. Anyone that says there is a difference in sound stage or anything else is purely false.
Yet, if you separate the decompression stage from the streamer (part), there is an improvement in sound. Roon RAAT or Audirvana, as well as UPnP media servers that decompress FLAC into WAV before you send this out to the streamer do this and they sound different. That’s easily verifiable. So, in theory you are right, in practice, most streamer or streamer/DAC manufacturers don’t isolate their internals well enough.
Some people perceiving differences have turned out not to be wrong. Why? Not because the FLAC files are deficient, they're not, and identical to the WAV file when decompressed/decoded. So why? Because decompressing FLAC takes up processing time, and depending on the streamer/player, this may be perceivable. About 12/13 years ago I definitely preferred WAV. Cyrus, the hifi manufacturer, encouraged buyers to rip in WAV when their first streamers were released about 12 years ago or so. In digital audio bits are bits yes, but in transporting those bits it's hardly a straightforward affair - this is what some people cannot grasp.
@@MohsinWadee When a flac file is decoded... it is not immediately going to a DAC. It is going into a buffer before the DAC. This buffer is only a fraction of a second but it keeps a continuous stream flowing to the DAC even when the processor is taxed with decoding. Even a 20 year old processor should not suffer from buffer underruns.
@@phreak1118 have you heard of jitter? Procerssing etc etc can introuce jitter albeit miniscule amounts. If an old snough processor is slow, you'll hear it.
I rip to Wav for one reason, TIME. Ripping to FLAC is a two step process. It's actually ripping to a temporary WAV file and then converting that file to FLAC. When I am ripping a lot of CDs in one setting, which I do more often than not, I like to hear the results first. I then convert to FLAC at at the moment or I wait until I have more time. It also gives me more flexibility when I edit the ID3 tag or whatever its called on the FLAC,
I don't know what kind of computer you use but I use a 5 year old middle class CPU and converting to flac takes less than a second per song so that isn't really a factor I believe.
I still do when going for long drives. I get looks, but I rather pop in a CD than mess around with spotify and bluetooth (that can't match anywhere near the bitrate of a CD anyways). I'm a millennial so I have no issue with discs.
Who said it wasn't cool anymore and why'd you listen to them 😂 But for real, a decent DAP (digital audio player) is cheaper than ever right now, and you can load 2tb onto a micro SD card and have your entire library on it with plenty of room to spare for more in the future!
I used to rip wav exclusively. But then I learned that some bands would hide easter egg tracks in the pregap space on their cds. Most ripping software that supports flac will preserve this pregap and the cue sheet will be properly adjusted for the pregap. When you rip to wav, the pregap data is ignored. Anyways to access a pregap easter egg song or track on a cd player, you have to be playing the current track and then hold rewind and it'll rewind past 0:00 into the negative where the pregap song is stored.
@@soundstagenetwork The Crystal Method’s Vegas album. I can’t remember the name of the song, but if you go to track 4 and hold rewind, the cd player will start going into the pregap.
Well you can ONLY edit in WAV format. I have been using WaveLab since 5.0a and now WaveLab Pro 11, and Sound Forge 10,11,16, Audition, etc with iZotope plug-ins (5 through Ozone 10 Pro currently) and FabFilter Pro plug-ins, and you can ONLY use WAV files in professional editing software. Yes, you can open and save FLAC files now, but they're encoded and decoded in real time first.
@@dougschneider8243yes, I do and have been since it came out, and used SHN before FLAC for BIT-PERFECT lossless compression. There is NOOOOOO difference, trust me, other than file size being about 40-50% less.
A huge difference for me (and I've been recording high-end high resolution audio live for almost 30 years) is that FLAC is able to be TAGGED. At least with my tagger, MP3Tag v3.28 at the moment. WAV files can't, and that's a big enough reason for me to KEEP encoding in FLAC format. Also, yes HDD/SSD space is CHEAP, BUT when you have well over 2,000+ recordings, it's just uneconomical to keep everything in WAV files. And back to the tagging. For every set I record, I make a 24-Bit fileset chopped into tracks, as well as a 16/44.1 CD quality chopped fileset, plus I'm one of the ONLY Taper's who make 320 MP3's as well. And I leave my RAW, uncut masters untracked and just FLAC'd. With 3 sources per set, I end up with 20-30gb of FLAC's per set/show. And trust me when I say this, there is NOOOOOO audible or digital differences between FLAC and WAV files!!! I have done blind comps for the last 25 years and I just can't tell a difference between a 24/96 WAV vs FLAC, and I have AMAZING hearing and can easily hear the difference between different IEM cables and materials. Once more, a properly encoded FLAC SHOULD uncompress to an identical WAV, so where'd the difference go between encoding and decoding? Nowhere because there is NO difference, or I wouldn't risk my live recordings by encoding them to FLAC (and SHN format before FLAC). If you have the space and don't care about tagging, then I say go for it and leave the WAV files alone. But for anyone with a massive library of live recordings AND high resolution albums, it's just not a plausible idea and not having things tagged would get ugly VERY VERY quickly 😢
No, compression does NOT necessarily mean missing data. You can compress a file in either a LOSSLESS way or a LOSSY way. In simple terms, LOSSY compression is done by using the same data storage scheme, but omitting some of the data. LOSSLESS compression is done by keeping all of the data, but storing it in a more efficient way. For audio, the standard uniform storage scheme that you ultimately feed into the audio engine uses the same number of bits to store each audio sample, so that number needs to be big enough to store the largest possible value. That is, every sample takes up enough memory to cover the entire dynamic range of the recording. However, most samples are usually nowhere near the dynamic limit and have much lower values that do not require all those bits to store. So a large amount of the memory in the file isn't typically needed. One form of lossless compression is to squeeze out all of this unused memory by storing each sample using only the number or bits required to store that particular value. Then when read, it is expanded back into the uniform scheme before being fed into the audio engine. This works because it eliminates a lot more unused memory than it needs to add to keep track of where each sample begins and ends in the data stream. Then it uses this additional information to decode the file and expand it back into the uniform scheme. The data that comes out is exactly the same as in the uncompressed file -- it was just stored in a more efficient way. No missing data.
I think "storage is cheap" is a bad argument for uncompressed. FLAC is as close to "free additional space" as we can get without compromising quality. Sure, FLAC may use more power to decompress, but same can be said for uncompressed in respect to the time it takes to load into memory.
@@問答無用-t2y no, I'm not superior, I just Say FLAC is for afraid and shy users (or fool users) that think about storage and space in the device. I'm just an amateur audioPhilEspector 😆 as Flashbeagle, I'm not superior seeker. If You get offended 'cause You are a FLAC lover, maybe You don't have enough space in your media-device.
When you are making a lossless file copy for a friend / other system etc from WAV to WAV you lose your tags, while with FLAC they just transfer and stay inside the file.
i just started to rip all my CDs to a digital format because i have set up a streaming server from my Synology NAS with the wonderful Plex and their Plexamp software. With 108TB of storage, space is NOT AN ISSUE!!! I have been ripping to FLAC but now that space is not an issue i wonder, if i want to convert all the rips i made to FLAC to WAV, is there going to be data is loss?
I am in the process of re-ripping a lot of my CDs. I did a few in WAV and found that it took about 3 or 4 times longer per CD. That was enough to make me go to FLAC.
You're not the first to mention this. I confess that when I rip, I don't pay much attention to timing -- I throw a disc in and walk away. But I'm going to check that out.
That makes no sense. The CD is ripped to PCM data, and then saved. Encoding to FLAC is nothing but an extra step that costs time theoretically, but practically doesn't - because it's done in parallel because modern PCs can easily do it all simultaneously. There is no reason why saving as WAV should take more time than saving to FLAC. If it does, the software is either doing weird stuff, or there's some other difference that has nothing to with the file format. Nicely intact CD vs a scratched one for example: the latter will take more time because there's way more re-reading and error correction going on.
FLAC is bit-for-bit identical to the original PCM file. I could see on old devices where the decoder isn't up to snuff but this is just getting ridiculous.
Thanks Doug and, yes, "this content helped". What I got from was a good dose of "relax, everything is going to OK". And, turns out - for me, it is. Take care. (I'll just play a bit more CSNY...).
Wav files can't hold much Metadata which is important for music. Wav was developed to capture uncompressed sound but FLAC was designed with music more specifically. Use FLAC.
WAV was actually developed by Microsoft as a way of capturing AUDIO information from CDs i.e. the music. So by differentiating between 'audio' and 'music' is just pedantic really.
Been ripping with eac to wav for 15 plus years. Glad I made that choice. Storage is much cheaper than 15 yrs ago. With compression you need to uncompress it and just another step for a player to process. I my experience using flacs I find the music is exactly the same except during listening there seems to be more artifacts or delays in some flacs files.
@@PerfectlyNormalBeast that works out to about 5% on a single thread, which is a bit more than what I've seen on my system (although it's the much newer 7700x) I would like to see this comparison on a standalone music player tho in relation to battery life. With a PC, phone, or smartwatch there's too many uncontrollable variables.
WAV Files are identical to FLAC the only difference is FLAC uncompreses to WAV on the fly during playback apart from that the zeros and ones are no different, it would be mad to use WAV unless your PC is so old that it isn't powerful enough to playback FLAC but your PC would have to be from the 90s for that to be a concern.
It is the audio player that is doing the FLAC decompression, and it may "cheat". Essentially playing back what amounts to some level of lossy. P.S. I use FLAC
I actually use FLAC for my movies. Blu-ray and newer come most of the time with lossless audio. 7.1 and 24 bits and a long movie can drive a WAV file over the 4 GB limit. And compressing multichannel tracks saves a huge amount of space. The savings are WAY more than you encounter with stereo music. a 16 bit 5.1 track willd typically be between 900 and 1,300 kbps. Raw bit rate is 4,608 kbps. 24 bits jumps up to low 3,000 kbps where raw bit rate would be 6,912 kbps. For 7.1 stuff you're looking at typically under 4,500 kbps down from 9,216 kbps raw. I do not keep the DTS and Dolby because they include a lossy core and the entire bit rate is usually way more than what I can get with FLAC. I don't care about the Atmos or :X height metadata.
FLAC keeps metadata which I think is rather favorable, maybe, unless you just want the pure wave content - I can get onboard with that too. An argument for WAV would be better compatibility perhaps. ALAC and FLAC are not as old and generic as WAV. A device gotta be pretty dumb not to be able to play WAV.
I find tagging much easier with AIFF or ALAC than I do with WAV. ALAC, unlike AAC, is 100% open source, even if the Hydrogen audio horde insist that Apple's proprietary encoder is superior to the free encoders. I have played back ALAC albums across a wide range of software on the three platforms I have and the only issue is ID3V2 tags.
do you mean Title and Arstist name? I know WAV can be add titles or info only when the CD is recorded with that information added and the final result is a CD-text ( I do that, with my CDs for my favourite music)
I ddont know still why there are thousands and videos on Ripping files to FLAC or WAVE why dont you blody RIP it RAW DATA ? its not poossible to RIP the whole CD to the Drive ? is it not importent to save the CD or A DVD you have ling in the sfhelf or in the basement BOX somewhere and losing its value or sound... You RIP the Format it is up to you later on what you want to make it... YOU will definatly lose the Qulity of it if you RIP back... I dont know why this method is not there... People just talking about wave or flac but what about RAW DC data i am talking about can it be RIPED ?
Good video, but ripping a WAV file to a computer file IS NOT a different file format. As BING clarifies: When a WAV audio file is copied to a computer, the audio file is not converted to a different file format. WAV files are uncompressed audio files that are stored in the PCM format. The WAV file format is a wrapper for various audio coding formats, and it is most commonly used for storing uncompressed audio in the linear pulse-code modulation (LPCM) format 2.
You might want to take much of what Bing tells you with a grain of salt. The file encoding scheme on a Compact Disc dates back to the early 1980s, when the CD was released by both Philips and Sony. There was something called the Red Book standard that detailed everything from how the file structure had to look to the physical construction of the disc. Back then, computer storage of music files didn't really exist. In 1991, IBM and Microsoft released the WAV format for storage of uncompressed music files on a computer storage device. It's format is much different than what's on a CD. Therefore, when you rip a CD to your computer in WAV -- or whatever format -- you are, indeed, ripping to a different file format than it was originally.
@nicksterjOf course there's a difference in the way they all encode data. But the bitstream that's derived and pumped through the DAC remains the same.
That's not something I really considered, but I'm not that concerned about "bit rot," because what that is, really, is failure of the storage medium -- and when it comes to digital storage, I'm a huge believer in backing up and backing up and backing up anything you have as many times as you can.
"clever compression" is basically playing a trick on our ears. I think the listening experience of WAV is going to be superior. You cannot shave hundreds of kilobits per second and not have any effect on the sound. Personally, I rip using accurate rip and rip to AIFF which is the best option, it is identically uncompressed to WAV and contains metadata like artist, album and song name plus artwork. WAV does not include artwork. Just rip to AIFF using accurate rip and rip at about 10x speed and you will have peace of mind.
It's also... sort of as ubiquitously compatible as WAV? But hey, if you've got Foobar2000 or fre:ac then you can convert from one to the other without losing anything anyway.
It doesn't shave anything it compresses the file whilst it's inactive but unpacks it during playback it's very clever and completely identical sound quality to WAV.
FYI, you don’t have to say on the Internet anymore ha ha. Everything is the Internet now. That’s not the old days anymore, where you had to dial in and most of life was off-line Just had to give you some flack ha ha
The difference in sound between the compressed and uncompressed files may be due to the processing power required in the audio device to uncompress compressed files. And the noise it generates. See th-cam.com/video/tbo9mfeK8yg/w-d-xo.htmlsi=S_beolKlg5lB4SbP
If you notice, he offers no proof of that in his video, and neither has anyone else making that claim. Also, one has to thing about this: The slowest part of any computer system is the storage I/O, not the processing. FLAC files are half to two-thirds the size, usually, so they're quicker to read off a storage device. Why wouldn't that help?
@@dougschneider8243 It's just his guess, because if there is any difference in sound, it isn't from the source digital information per se, but from its processing by some decoding device. And even if there is any difference, I guess it's very minimal. I rip and store my music in ALAC format.
@@GBukalders You're right -- it's just a guess. But it's also unfortunate because people are looking for advice and guessing isn't the best way to go about things. I would say the difference isn't minimal -- it's nonexistent.
Flac is decoded into uncompressed BUFFERED bits in memory before it is streamed to a DAC. The bits from a wav source and a flac source are an identical PCM 16-bit 44.1khz before they get converted from digital to analog in the DAC. Anyone that says there is a difference in sound stage or anything else is purely false.
Except of course the file size difference if that was a consideration.
Yet, if you separate the decompression stage from the streamer (part), there is an improvement in sound. Roon RAAT or Audirvana, as well as UPnP media servers that decompress FLAC into WAV before you send this out to the streamer do this and they sound different. That’s easily verifiable. So, in theory you are right, in practice, most streamer or streamer/DAC manufacturers don’t isolate their internals well enough.
Some people perceiving differences have turned out not to be wrong. Why? Not because the FLAC files are deficient, they're not, and identical to the WAV file when decompressed/decoded. So why? Because decompressing FLAC takes up processing time, and depending on the streamer/player, this may be perceivable. About 12/13 years ago I definitely preferred WAV. Cyrus, the hifi manufacturer, encouraged buyers to rip in WAV when their first streamers were released about 12 years ago or so.
In digital audio bits are bits yes, but in transporting those bits it's hardly a straightforward affair - this is what some people cannot grasp.
@@MohsinWadee When a flac file is decoded... it is not immediately going to a DAC. It is going into a buffer before the DAC. This buffer is only a fraction of a second but it keeps a continuous stream flowing to the DAC even when the processor is taxed with decoding. Even a 20 year old processor should not suffer from buffer underruns.
@@phreak1118 have you heard of jitter? Procerssing etc etc can introuce jitter albeit miniscule amounts. If an old snough processor is slow, you'll hear it.
I rip to Wav for one reason, TIME. Ripping to FLAC is a two step process. It's actually ripping to a temporary WAV file and then converting that file to FLAC. When I am ripping a lot of CDs in one setting, which I do more often than not, I like to hear the results first. I then convert to FLAC at at the moment or I wait until I have more time. It also gives me more flexibility when I edit the ID3 tag or whatever its called on the FLAC,
Does that mean you rip CD's to image files with cue sheets? Because that's about the fastest way (while using EAC).
@@問答無用-t2y no just the old-fashioned way
I don't know what kind of computer you use but I use a 5 year old middle class CPU and converting to flac takes less than a second per song so that isn't really a factor I believe.
It really annoys me that someone decided it wasn't cool to burn CDs anymore.
I still do when going for long drives. I get looks, but I rather pop in a CD than mess around with spotify and bluetooth (that can't match anywhere near the bitrate of a CD anyways). I'm a millennial so I have no issue with discs.
@@thr0nic Well Said
Who said it wasn't cool anymore and why'd you listen to them 😂
But for real, a decent DAP (digital audio player) is cheaper than ever right now, and you can load 2tb onto a micro SD card and have your entire library on it with plenty of room to spare for more in the future!
@ I don't.
I used to rip wav exclusively. But then I learned that some bands would hide easter egg tracks in the pregap space on their cds. Most ripping software that supports flac will preserve this pregap and the cue sheet will be properly adjusted for the pregap. When you rip to wav, the pregap data is ignored. Anyways to access a pregap easter egg song or track on a cd player, you have to be playing the current track and then hold rewind and it'll rewind past 0:00 into the negative where the pregap song is stored.
Fascinating. Can you tell us a specific example?
Did you try ripping as CD image with EAC or XLD where the log will show you where the table of contents begins?
he he!
@@soundstagenetwork The Crystal Method’s Vegas album. I can’t remember the name of the song, but if you go to track 4 and hold rewind, the cd player will start going into the pregap.
Wav is good for editing audio but that is the only reason I would use it now as big files.
I take it you store in FLAC?
@@dougschneider8243nah mate, he uses 16 kbps mp3
Well you can ONLY edit in WAV format. I have been using WaveLab since 5.0a and now WaveLab Pro 11, and Sound Forge 10,11,16, Audition, etc with iZotope plug-ins (5 through Ozone 10 Pro currently) and FabFilter Pro plug-ins, and you can ONLY use WAV files in professional editing software. Yes, you can open and save FLAC files now, but they're encoded and decoded in real time first.
@@dougschneider8243yes, I do and have been since it came out, and used SHN before FLAC for BIT-PERFECT lossless compression. There is NOOOOOO difference, trust me, other than file size being about 40-50% less.
@@dougschneider8243not to mention, WAV files can't be tagged, at least not with MP3TAG, which is what I've used for the last decade or longer.
A huge difference for me (and I've been recording high-end high resolution audio live for almost 30 years) is that FLAC is able to be TAGGED. At least with my tagger, MP3Tag v3.28 at the moment. WAV files can't, and that's a big enough reason for me to KEEP encoding in FLAC format. Also, yes HDD/SSD space is CHEAP, BUT when you have well over 2,000+ recordings, it's just uneconomical to keep everything in WAV files. And back to the tagging. For every set I record, I make a 24-Bit fileset chopped into tracks, as well as a 16/44.1 CD quality chopped fileset, plus I'm one of the ONLY Taper's who make 320 MP3's as well. And I leave my RAW, uncut masters untracked and just FLAC'd. With 3 sources per set, I end up with 20-30gb of FLAC's per set/show.
And trust me when I say this, there is NOOOOOO audible or digital differences between FLAC and WAV files!!! I have done blind comps for the last 25 years and I just can't tell a difference between a 24/96 WAV vs FLAC, and I have AMAZING hearing and can easily hear the difference between different IEM cables and materials. Once more, a properly encoded FLAC SHOULD uncompress to an identical WAV, so where'd the difference go between encoding and decoding? Nowhere because there is NO difference, or I wouldn't risk my live recordings by encoding them to FLAC (and SHN format before FLAC).
If you have the space and don't care about tagging, then I say go for it and leave the WAV files alone. But for anyone with a massive library of live recordings AND high resolution albums, it's just not a plausible idea and not having things tagged would get ugly VERY VERY quickly 😢
No, compression does NOT necessarily mean missing data. You can compress a file in either a LOSSLESS way or a LOSSY way.
In simple terms, LOSSY compression is done by using the same data storage scheme, but omitting some of the data. LOSSLESS compression is done by keeping all of the data, but storing it in a more efficient way. For audio, the standard uniform storage scheme that you ultimately feed into the audio engine uses the same number of bits to store each audio sample, so that number needs to be big enough to store the largest possible value. That is, every sample takes up enough memory to cover the entire dynamic range of the recording. However, most samples are usually nowhere near the dynamic limit and have much lower values that do not require all those bits to store. So a large amount of the memory in the file isn't typically needed. One form of lossless compression is to squeeze out all of this unused memory by storing each sample using only the number or bits required to store that particular value. Then when read, it is expanded back into the uniform scheme before being fed into the audio engine. This works because it eliminates a lot more unused memory than it needs to add to keep track of where each sample begins and ends in the data stream. Then it uses this additional information to decode the file and expand it back into the uniform scheme. The data that comes out is exactly the same as in the uncompressed file -- it was just stored in a more efficient way. No missing data.
I think "storage is cheap" is a bad argument for uncompressed. FLAC is as close to "free additional space" as we can get without compromising quality. Sure, FLAC may use more power to decompress, but same can be said for uncompressed in respect to the time it takes to load into memory.
FLAC is for the afraid people about storage.
@@antonio.x22 Knock it off, you aren't "superior" to anyone.
@@問答無用-t2y no, I'm not superior,
I just Say FLAC is for afraid and shy users (or fool users) that think about storage and space in the device.
I'm just an amateur audioPhilEspector 😆 as Flashbeagle, I'm not superior seeker. If You get offended 'cause You are a FLAC lover, maybe You don't have enough space in your media-device.
@@antonio.x22 Do you tell MP3 & AAC users the same thing?
I just Say FLAC is for afraid and shy users (or fool users) that worry about storage and space in the device. @@問答無用-t2y
When you are making a lossless file copy for a friend / other system etc from WAV to WAV you lose your tags, while with FLAC they just transfer and stay inside the file.
i just started to rip all my CDs to a digital format because i have set up a streaming server from my Synology NAS with the wonderful Plex and their Plexamp software. With 108TB of storage, space is NOT AN ISSUE!!! I have been ripping to FLAC but now that space is not an issue i wonder, if i want to convert all the rips i made to FLAC to WAV, is there going to be data is loss?
Very clear explanation thanks for expressing it in such a manner that is easily received by youth.
I think its that some people believe the uncompressing the flac file can change the sound. Personally very much doubt that and dont worry much.
I am in the process of re-ripping a lot of my CDs. I did a few in WAV and found that it took about 3 or 4 times longer per CD. That was enough to make me go to FLAC.
You're not the first to mention this. I confess that when I rip, I don't pay much attention to timing -- I throw a disc in and walk away. But I'm going to check that out.
@@dougschneider8243 It might depend upon the ripping s/w.
That makes no sense. The CD is ripped to PCM data, and then saved. Encoding to FLAC is nothing but an extra step that costs time theoretically, but practically doesn't - because it's done in parallel because modern PCs can easily do it all simultaneously.
There is no reason why saving as WAV should take more time than saving to FLAC. If it does, the software is either doing weird stuff, or there's some other difference that has nothing to with the file format. Nicely intact CD vs a scratched one for example: the latter will take more time because there's way more re-reading and error correction going on.
@@ropeburn6684 Well, in my case, theory and reality are different.
FLAC is bit-for-bit identical to the original PCM file. I could see on old devices where the decoder isn't up to snuff but this is just getting ridiculous.
Thanks Doug and, yes, "this content helped". What I got from was a good dose of "relax, everything is going to OK". And, turns out - for me, it is. Take care. (I'll just play a bit more CSNY...).
Glad it helped. There's a lot of bad info on this topic.
Wav files can't hold much Metadata which is important for music. Wav was developed to capture uncompressed sound but FLAC was designed with music more specifically. Use FLAC.
WAV was actually developed by Microsoft as a way of capturing AUDIO information from CDs i.e. the music. So by differentiating between 'audio' and 'music' is just pedantic really.
Been ripping with eac to wav for 15 plus years. Glad I made that choice. Storage is much cheaper than 15 yrs ago. With compression you need to uncompress it and just another step for a player to process. I my experience using flacs I find the music is exactly the same except during listening there seems to be more artifacts or delays in some flacs files.
How did you manage 15 years ago? Everything was really low back then.
I've been searching for processor usage of playback flac vs wav. That's my final concern. I'll probably have to test it myself
Let us know what you learn!
I haven't made any wav files, but the flac playback is bouncing between 0 and 0.2% processor usage :)
@@PerfectlyNormalBeast On what sort of CPU?
@@ZeldagigafanMatthew Ryzen 9 3900 12-Core, 16 ram
@@PerfectlyNormalBeast that works out to about 5% on a single thread, which is a bit more than what I've seen on my system (although it's the much newer 7700x) I would like to see this comparison on a standalone music player tho in relation to battery life. With a PC, phone, or smartwatch there's too many uncontrollable variables.
WAV Files are identical to FLAC the only difference is FLAC uncompreses to WAV on the fly during playback apart from that the zeros and ones are no different, it would be mad to use WAV unless your PC is so old that it isn't powerful enough to playback FLAC but your PC would have to be from the 90s for that to be a concern.
It is the audio player that is doing the FLAC decompression, and it may "cheat". Essentially playing back what amounts to some level of lossy.
P.S. I use FLAC
Good review but Can I ripping flac to wav and get same ripping cd to wav quality ?
WAV doesn't support metadata, which should rule it out IMO. I'd use AIFF for uncompressed audio, but I just use ALAC and 256 kbps AAC for my phone.
I actually use FLAC for my movies. Blu-ray and newer come most of the time with lossless audio. 7.1 and 24 bits and a long movie can drive a WAV file over the 4 GB limit. And compressing multichannel tracks saves a huge amount of space. The savings are WAY more than you encounter with stereo music. a 16 bit 5.1 track willd typically be between 900 and 1,300 kbps. Raw bit rate is 4,608 kbps. 24 bits jumps up to low 3,000 kbps where raw bit rate would be 6,912 kbps. For 7.1 stuff you're looking at typically under 4,500 kbps down from 9,216 kbps raw. I do not keep the DTS and Dolby because they include a lossy core and the entire bit rate is usually way more than what I can get with FLAC. I don't care about the Atmos or :X height metadata.
How much space do I need for 100 music cds in wav?
Depends on the number and length of songs on each CD
I started ripping all my CDs to .wav but with FLAC you can store metadata easier.
You can have the best of both worlds - rip in FLAC but at Level 1 i.e. uncompressed! Tagging, album art is still available as usual.
In most systems WAV vs FLAC sound the same. In higher / ultra - high end systems with very high resolution capabilities a difference can be heard.
Now do a phase inversion test between the two (from the same source) & tell me what you get.
Agreed
What high end system very high resolution capabilities you know?
@MF Nickster thanks for the knowledge
@mfnickster9754 How so ? You can’t add information that’s not there.
I use flac uncompressed for all my cd’s I have ripped and my ears are happy 😂
FLAC keeps metadata which I think is rather favorable, maybe, unless you just want the pure wave content - I can get onboard with that too. An argument for WAV would be better compatibility perhaps. ALAC and FLAC are not as old and generic as WAV. A device gotta be pretty dumb not to be able to play WAV.
I find tagging much easier with AIFF or ALAC than I do with WAV. ALAC, unlike AAC, is 100% open source, even if the Hydrogen audio horde insist that Apple's proprietary encoder is superior to the free encoders. I have played back ALAC albums across a wide range of software on the three platforms I have and the only issue is ID3V2 tags.
Why WAV over AIFF? WAV does not support embedded metadata.
What about broad support for embedded metadata?
do you mean Title and Arstist name?
I know WAV can be add titles or info only when the CD is recorded with that information added and the final result is a CD-text ( I do that, with my CDs for my favourite music)
I ddont know still why there are thousands and videos on Ripping files to FLAC or WAVE why dont you blody RIP it RAW DATA ? its not poossible to RIP the whole CD to the Drive ? is it not importent to save the CD or A DVD you have ling in the sfhelf or in the basement BOX somewhere and losing its value or sound... You RIP the Format it is up to you later on what you want to make it... YOU will definatly lose the Qulity of it if you RIP back... I dont know why this method is not there... People just talking about wave or flac but what about RAW DC data i am talking about can it be RIPED ?
Good video, but ripping a WAV file to a computer file IS NOT a different file format. As BING clarifies: When a WAV audio file is copied to a computer, the audio file is not converted to a different file format. WAV files are uncompressed audio files that are stored in the PCM format. The WAV file format is a wrapper for various audio coding formats, and it is most commonly used for storing uncompressed audio in the linear pulse-code modulation (LPCM) format 2.
You might want to take much of what Bing tells you with a grain of salt. The file encoding scheme on a Compact Disc dates back to the early 1980s, when the CD was released by both Philips and Sony. There was something called the Red Book standard that detailed everything from how the file structure had to look to the physical construction of the disc. Back then, computer storage of music files didn't really exist. In 1991, IBM and Microsoft released the WAV format for storage of uncompressed music files on a computer storage device. It's format is much different than what's on a CD. Therefore, when you rip a CD to your computer in WAV -- or whatever format -- you are, indeed, ripping to a different file format than it was originally.
I stand corrected. Good point about BING too!
@nicksterjOf course there's a difference in the way they all encode data. But the bitstream that's derived and pumped through the DAC remains the same.
WAV doesn't have Meta data for File info
Flac does so better to use Flac for music collection
Large uncompressed files are more susceptible to bit rot.
That's not something I really considered, but I'm not that concerned about "bit rot," because what that is, really, is failure of the storage medium -- and when it comes to digital storage, I'm a huge believer in backing up and backing up and backing up anything you have as many times as you can.
I remember when I converted my first cd at home on you compacq pc to wave on my 10 giga hard drive and re convert it to mp3 😅
I love PBS's SoundStage. : - )
Storage isn’t really a problem as it was back then so WAV all the way!
True!
Aiff so i have tag info
"clever compression" is basically playing a trick on our ears. I think the listening experience of WAV is going to be superior. You cannot shave hundreds of kilobits per second and not have any effect on the sound.
Personally, I rip using accurate rip and rip to AIFF which is the best option, it is identically uncompressed to WAV and contains metadata like artist, album and song name plus artwork. WAV does not include artwork. Just rip to AIFF using accurate rip and rip at about 10x speed and you will have peace of mind.
It's also... sort of as ubiquitously compatible as WAV?
But hey, if you've got Foobar2000 or fre:ac then you can convert from one to the other without losing anything anyway.
Untrue about .WAV and no metadata/artwork -
I just Ripped a music CD: Silverchair - Frogstomp and Tagged it with all it's Metadata and Album Art
@@ProflexFitness With what program, because it doesn’t work on all of them.
@@問答無用-t2y Mp3tag - the universal Tag editor
It doesn't shave anything it compresses the file whilst it's inactive but unpacks it during playback it's very clever and completely identical sound quality to WAV.
FYI, you don’t have to say on the Internet anymore ha ha. Everything is the Internet now.
That’s not the old days anymore, where you had to dial in and most of life was off-line
Just had to give you some flack ha ha
So if you just feel like it one day because your bored even though tagging will be impossible. Kiss cover art goodbye. 😁
The difference in sound between the compressed and uncompressed files may be due to the processing power required in the audio device to uncompress compressed files. And the noise it generates.
See th-cam.com/video/tbo9mfeK8yg/w-d-xo.htmlsi=S_beolKlg5lB4SbP
If you notice, he offers no proof of that in his video, and neither has anyone else making that claim. Also, one has to thing about this: The slowest part of any computer system is the storage I/O, not the processing. FLAC files are half to two-thirds the size, usually, so they're quicker to read off a storage device. Why wouldn't that help?
@@dougschneider8243 It's just his guess, because if there is any difference in sound, it isn't from the source digital information per se, but from its processing by some decoding device. And even if there is any difference, I guess it's very minimal. I rip and store my music in ALAC format.
@@GBukalders You're right -- it's just a guess. But it's also unfortunate because people are looking for advice and guessing isn't the best way to go about things. I would say the difference isn't minimal -- it's nonexistent.
How to rip audio from a DTS audio cd
Wav is INFERIOR to ISO😂
Just buy a cd player. And that’s it. 🤷🏽♂️
If is compressed is missing data period.
Nope
@@soundstagenetwork you can argue all you want but is a fact not an opinion
@@Morpheus170What you stated is not a fact. Ever heard of ZIP files? Lossless compression coming on 35 years.
@@dougschneider8243Yes, what about zip files?
Yes, what about zip files? nothing to do with the topic at hand.@@dougschneider8243