flac decompression is a trivial task for any modern computer and by this I mean pretty much any device down to a £5 Raspberry Pi Zero. For a system admin like myself, the suggestion that a system would output different data to an audio device or emit "noise" that wasn't there before because it had to decompress the payload is hilarious. Wav is pcm data in a file container, flac is the same but in a compressed container. The flac format also supports tagged metadata in the file header as standard which wav does not, imagine having a large wav library with no tags and dealing with cue files, equally hilarious. I wouldn't buy a file format that can't support editable metadata.
@@Luvdac62 Limited. The only "data" the shows up on my streamer from WAV files is the file name and track length. Maybe somehow I'm not doing it right, but sure seems unintuitive if it's possible.
@Osiris Marbles There should be no difference between flac and wav as far as metadata capacity goes. Even when I convert flac to wav using dbpoweramp, all flac data is transferred to the resultant wav file. Wav files are equally editable in mp3tag just like their flac counterparts.
The whole idea of FLAC, and the L in the acronym, is that it's supposed to be lossless compression. An 8MB song in FLAC vs a 32MB song in WAV is a big storage savings and for some people that is what matters more.
neither can I, but perhaps some streamers pass on said additional (notional) noise created by a more busy processor to the digital output in one form or another- so, highly dependent on streamer and DAC’s susceptibility to such addl noise.
Yes… FLAC file compression/decompression is asymmetric: it is trivial for a computing device to decompress FLAC; FLAC compression, depending on the level of optimality chosen, can be compute intensive, but that is irrelevant to playback.
@@Baerchenization WAV is pointless, that's the argument. It's not better sonically and it's inferior in every other way to FLAC so what's the point in it anymore?
FLAC is nice when we take our music with us on a portable device. Not only for space issues, but for metadata as well. I've done A-B comparisons and can't hear any difference. Maybe that because I'm kind of old or just don't have high enough resolution in my home system. For that, maybe I should be grateful 🙂
An old music loving friend finally came out as an audiophile several years ago. I'm sure if he ever added digital music files to his system, he would never use FLAC.
You can't hear it because the difference is NULL...simple...this topic would be real 20+ years ago when noisy PCs using a lot of power for simple stuff with poor filtering on the power rails and with some sound card on the motherboard existed.
you'd need superhuman hearing and a godly sound system to be able to notice any difference on maybe 1/1000 tracks, and only if you're A/Bing ; I wouldn't worry
Wow! Never realised this could cause so much argument! But here’s a thought…if there’s no difference in sound between one and the other why are many of you so bothered that some of us choose WAV? Given that I think if you prefer FLAC you should absolutely use that!
This is the second video Paul has made that does flac a disservice. When flac is decompressed it is bit for bit an exact copy of the CD. Perhaps, perhaps there is some argument to say that your streamer doing the decompression/decoding might get things wrong but units like that surely have to be very uncommon these days and I bet it takes relatively as much cpu power to read a WAV as it does to convert a flac.
So, you think that the other benefits of FLAC is better than listening to the better WAV file. When is it that sound quality of music isn't the most important thing? You may be right in what you disagree with Paul, EXCEPT THE FACT THAT WAV IS BETTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
No computer noise is added when reading flac. ) That's first of all. Secondly, waw is also a packaging, and requires decoding, just like flac. That is, we can encode music to flac, we can encode to waw, but both have to be decoded when listening. Good luck, Paul. ) Sorry about my terrible English.
If there is a difference in sound between FLAC and equivalent WAV sound, there is a problem somewhere else in the system. The reason to use FLAC, even when storage is so cheap, is to make room for DSD files. 😁
The only possible difference I could think of are buffer errors if that tiny tiny amount of cpu usage caused the buffer to empty and even then you can increase your buffer.
@@Harald_Reindl even in some hypothetical universe where this added some actual latency you'd just need to increase your buffer size and then there would be 0 difference in timing
@@sammyvincent6701 again: the whole damned FLAC file is decoded in one step and uncompressed PCM as it was a WAV file is the result - no need for buffering at all - the data of a laugable tiny uncompressed audiofile fits in the cache of a smartwatch
You're right, but what about the metadata. Wav sucks and AIF is a little bit better, but nothing if compared to Flac. And if storage is not an issue anymore (I agree with you) so it is for the very simple computing effort necessary to unfold the Flac into PCM. Not counting that a regular computer can unfold the whole file BEFORE playing it in a very short time.
well if your system/ears/brain enables you to hear a difference (my combo here does not really) then there might be the option to use a less compressed FLAC file. Easy to try out..
Sorry Paul, but for me there is no difference. Maybe because I don’t use cable lifters 🫢. Storage size may not matter that much, but metadata handling is crucial. In terms of metadata tagging both WAV and AIFF suck. Tagging FLAC and ALAC is a breeze. Concerning computer horsepower for decoding FLAC, that must be 0.0000000..HP for a modern CPU, in other words: nothing. And by the way, both FLAC and WAV are codecs containing PCM files. So even WAV needs to be decoded by the CPU before PCM can be played.
Audiophiles only listen to 100 different tracks which let shine their hifi, that's why space don't matter - people using their hifi for listening to music have larger libraries with redundant storage and multiple backups - with wav I would need 7 TB raw storage and mirrored 14 TB, the same again on my mirrored machine offsite and than two times for my offline backups on different locations {and no after all that years I won't start again setup computers where a dead disk requires more work than pull out, replace and continue)
Done correctly, decompressing FLAC should provoke fewer IO operations than loading the same music from WAV, and IO operations provoke strongest digital noise.
@@georgemartinezza "correctly" is the default here, so the question should rather be "how can you decompress FLAC incorrectly?" Such situations could only be created by incorrect configurations, e.g. if you use an external library for decoding FLAC files, purge it from memory after reading one file, then load it again for each new file. But even then the external library should still be in the disk cache of the computer, so no new I/O ops should be needed unless someone tried to "optimize" the system in a bad way, e.g. by disabling this cache to save memory.
You're right about I/O -- these people who talk about the extra processing seem to have no idea who data finds its way through a computer. Plus, storage devices are typically the slowest thing on a computer.
@@dougschneider8243 maybe you are an ancient human from lost civilizations. the storage in a computer no matters if it is slow in HDD or faster in SSD. if you don't know please don't say anything, you only show how zombignorant you are.
@@georgemartinezza You should perhaps learn how to read and write before you say anything. Read my post above -- I mentioned that I/O from a storage device is among the slowest of the processes in a computer. I was mentioning it because of people claiming uncompressing is a difficult task and therefore THAT changes the sound. I don't believe any of it changes the sound. As I said, you should brush up on your ability to read and write before hurling insults.
I'm going to disagree on this one. The CPU resources to decode flac are trivial. There's no reason to double the length of my file copies and operations just because I want WAV, the FLAC files are large enough! What you're missing is that files on the hard drive are not a static thing, they must be backed up and maintained. This is what takes the real bandwidth. FLAC has some built-in features which help with file maintenance, such as a CRC of the audio at the time of encoding. This allows one to scan one's collection periodically looking for errors.
Space and bandwidth. You can always convert all of your FLAC files to WAV so you don't have to decompress while playing. It's your gear that's degrading the sound, not the storage format.
What exact modern gear (not a PC from 2 decades ago) is degrading the sound due to FLAC playback file decompression? If you analyze any modern SOC system load into the various software processes, you will see that FLAC decompression is NOTHING in comparison with other things the processor do. Even the IP or USB interface of your device is running a lot more instructions just to handle the data protocols. And the list goes on and on in what happens within a modern SOC software stack. Anyone can hear when you navigate in the menus, cause that should also be audible from the CPU and GPU cores doing their processing, if this was a real topic LOL...of course not. This topic will not pass a blind test for sure.
@@D1N02 Of course we are. I'm an audiophile and work in audio R&D. Some things can not be easily measured (e.g. sound stage depth), of course, but interference issues (what this is) of electrical noise from a modern CPU causing interference in analog circuits most certainly can. This issue is not a real topic. However, it's plausible that a FLAC and WAV file of the same track can sound different if there is some software bug or SRC involved in the processing of the data. But then it is about bad engineering (software). With bad engineering, many things can be argued, but I thought we were talking about audiophile products???
Nowadays it’s trivial for modern silicon to unpack FLAC format and the DAC will play perfectly the same when it gets exactly the same data. Processing noise is not an audible thing…except in some old PC from a couple of decades or more ago. The SNR of modern DACs is way way above human hearing abilities with typically 120dB, so this is not a real topic. Show me a setup with FLAC de-compression represented on the DAC analog output as a noise residual exceeding the same track played as WAV. No, any modern CPU or SOC runs much more code doing stuff for the GUI and overall operating system stack. Unfortunately, software processing audio can have some bugs and perhaps that can cause a difference, but nowadays that would be unusual. Modern data processing is highly reliable and modern processing is not yielding audible noise on the analog path, unless bad engineering is involved.
Any difference in audibility is imagined. Concerns about computer horsepower are as outdated as those about storage and bandwidth. Certainly no reason to be concerned.
Storage space for high definition WAV and DSD files may be inexpensive for home user but perhaps not for those who sell downloads on line. They have to pay for both the storage and the bandwidth.This also holds true for on line streaming. In those cases the saving may make the difference between staying in business or not. Afterall downloads is a pretty small segment of the market.I have been listening to FLAC based files for a number of years and don't believe there is any noticeable difference between WAV vs FLAC that is unfolded to wav and then goes through my DAC and then to my amplifier. That's something to remember. No one can 'listen' to FLAC or even WAV or DSD for that matter. It all has to be converted to analog. The computer resources needed to decode it are minimal. They were more than adequate 10+ years ago and the technology has moved along considerably since then.
Storage is still "stupidly cheap" but I don't necessarily want to keep spending money on storage. If it's "bit for bit" then there is literally no reason, that's the end of the conversation. To have good Metadata for less space and less money when the files end up "bit for bit", as you said, then there's no reason for WAV at this point. "computerish noise" isn't there if it's actually "bit for bit" coming out of the DAC in the end.
@@weevilsnitz Paul has no clue when it comes do digital - what do you expect from a monkey stating "it's bit-perfect but the bits have noise?" when in the real world a bit has no space for noise
Storage is cheap, but it's not infinite! Compression to FLAC loses nothing, changes nothing, affects nothing, and there is no reason whatsoever to keep WAV rather than use FLAC. When you start storing over 100,000 hi-resolution tracks (as I have) then you realise very quickly that uncompressed WAV is NOT the way to go, and that the compressed BUT IDENTICAL FLAC option is the only sensible option. I have a 3TB NAS drive, and if I used WAV it would be over capacity already. There is no difference - none - in the sound quality of the same file stored as FLAC or WAV. It's time to stop confusing compressed with lossy. Lossless is lossless, whether it is FLAC or WAV.
There's also the back up factor. The time it takes to transfer your music files to a new backup if the old one has a disk that is beginning to fail is critical. WAV takes about 4 times as long.
The difference in sound quality between wav and flac will be dependent on hardware and software factors. FLAC was specifically designed for easy decompression over 20 years ago. Today's processors will have no difficulty decompressing flac. RAM buffer memory has improved. Also, MPD has evolved and improved over the years, with better buffer design. Once flac is decompressed into a buffer, it's the same data as wav. If you haven't recently compared wav and flac, listen again.
The cpu power needed to unpack flac is negligible and it was so for cpu's 20 years ago so there's no need for a new comparison. Also there's no difference in sound quality between flac and wav, after flac has been unpacked it is identical to the original wav file.
I’ve purchased a few flac files which won’t work on iTunes (music). When converted to WAV the files bit depth goes from 24 to 18 but keeps their sample size, 96k I think. Is this because the bit depth was artificially bumped up? My app provider hasn’t answered. The music seems to function okay at 18 bit though. I believe true 24 bit would make your ears bleed. Answers appreciated.
iTunes does not support FLAC - it has it's own Apple-friendly version, ALAC. Any conversion you are doing sis user-defined - if you set whatever software you are using to do the converting to do maintain the sample rate and bit depth of the original FLAC file, then you will get identical files in ALAC. Just to reassure you, 24-bit does not make your ears bleed.
Looks like I have to make another one of these FLAC vs. WAV files on top of the one I published yesterday. Such a misunderstanding here -- and from a manufacturer! The argument is that the uncompression is not a "nothing task." Actually, it is -- as someone pointed out in the comments already, it's a "trivial task" for any computer. But here's not what's accounted for -- the file might have to be uncompressed by the computer, but since it's roughly two-thirds the size on the drive, it takes the computer less time (and resources) to read the file. So you have the same sort of savings in terms of computer horsepower there. And since transferred data involves potentially a drive that's external, or data riding from an internal drive over the circuits, who's to say which is really more difficult. The point is, the uncompression is a ridiculous premise for a supposed difference in sound that, if testing is done fairly, doesn't really exist. Watch this is you want to see the only real reason to rip to WAV, which Paul McGowan does actually begin with: czcams.com/video/Lgk3p-JM-Rk/video.html
I’m confused. My understanding is that my computer does the file decoding and my Dac produces the music. So my DAC receives the same information wether it comes from a flac or wav file (losseless). So why would the Dac produce a different sound from this info in its buffer? Because the noise from the computer transfers somehow to the Dac?
To answer your two questions: it doesn't and it doesn't. There's a lot of misinformation regarding this subject, not helped by this video that suggests some sort of added noise, which is nonsense. Audiophiles have to justify their huge expenses...
I have ripped my music every which-a-way. I don't care about file size, but I do care about having metadata. And since iPhone and iPad are my main streamers, I was happy with M4A files. Now I'm confused.
same here. I just burn CDs from mp3, m4a or aac to WAV, just with songs I like for personal albums collections with more quality or WAV with little adjustment in tje software if it was necessary.
@@clickbeetle2720 meeoww : D that's true. commonly the songs I sellect from MP3 or M4A (whatever) are as they are and so we can't add info if it does not exist. some songs even in official youtube channel display: "this is the recorded song, no original exists" (oo! in terms of audio. some files are good enough in WAV without need any plugin to apply. other songs I've found are a mess of manipulation, the most common are "the cut in 0 dB like the grass to prevent the clipping" ( ooh really? o0! in terms of compression or loseless and bits: Once some songs are converted in WAV they appear in 16 bits. I add some equalizer minimal touch if it is needed, sometimes a little bit of gain +.5 o +1.0 dB, sometimes I reduce the peak of -.3 o 0 dB to -1 dB, it depends how the song comes, it increases the bits to 24 and the WAVE displayed (and it spectrum) increases a little for a better sound, _almost_ noticieable when you listen, sometimes yes, the enhancement is very necessary and with just a few EQ the differernce is very wide. of course, it depends the original song, and I don't do that with all my music, just the sellected personal playlist . to the extremes (not the song by Billy, no XD ) xtreme example: a popular old rock urban artist in Mexico recorded a lot of his famous songs just with a portable recorder on tape, we could add all the bits and EQ or plugins, maybe you can get a new version, but losing the original I suppose.
I see most of the points I was going to raise in response to this have already been mentioned, but I'll go with the big one. WAV is terrible for a music library because it can't store any metadata. I suppose if you use roon maybe it'll be able to identify and catalog your WAV music collection but I'm not 100% certain even that will work. Stick with something with metadata. If you think decompressing a lossless file adds noise, use AIFF and take control of your library.
Counterargument size: $50 for 1TB is for rotating hard drives. You don't want mechanically rotating things, because those make more noise than the decompression of FLAC to PCM can ever create on any computer built within the last 15 years. I just paid slightly less than $50 for a 256GB microSD card for my growing collection of music. And I need two cards for the two devices I usually use. Additionally I do backups, which require the same disk space twice again. The top-100 FLAC albums I listen to use about 50GB of space, with the majority being CD quality, but a growing number have 24bit bit depth and 48/96/192kHz sampling rate, so even with 1TB disk space you could just store about 2000 albums with this mix ratio. Additionally Octave Records now sell PCM352 albums. Megan Burtt's album "Shelter" is 3.7GB in FLAC format and would be more than 6GB in WAV format. So my poor little 256GB microSD cards could either store about 70 FLAC albums or about 40 WAV albums of this quality! To sum it up: Size is still a factor. Counterargument noise: Maybe even transferring fewer kilobytes (i.e. using FLAC) from SSD or via USB/network has positive impact on the sound, especially when you want gapless playback and the device needs to open the next audio file? P.S.: Despite my criticism: I really like your videos. Even if I don't always agree with you, they make me think, which is probably a good thing 🧠
I don't understand people's issue with traditional hard drives. I buy good quality ones and yes they cost more but I've never had one fail and I'm never noticed any issues of excess noise or anything that intrudes on my music enjoyment. I mean I understand solid state is supposed to be better but I haven't noticed much of a difference, at least not really from a sound quality perspective.
@@Audiorevue If they work fine for you, that's very good. I had some failing hard disk drives over the past decades, but I wasn't talking about failing drives. My point is: I certainly can't hear the difference between playing a WAV and a FLAC file and I doubt anyone can in a blind test unless something else is wrong in the player, but I certainly can hear spinning hard drives (the high-pitched sound of their rotation _and_ the bumps/clicks of head movement), unless they are very silent (which usually are 2.5" drives, where larger sizes have other attributes I don't like) and are more then about 2 meters (6ft) away. I still use hard disks at home, one is a small and silent USB drive attached to my router (i.e. far away from me) and the others are usually powered down (spinning down when not in use, removable HDDs in a drive cage, external USB HDDs). But if HDDs work fine for you, Paul or anyone else: Lucky you, you have cheap(er) access to large amounts of storage!
I have FLAC on my NAS. Roon decompresses it and sends it via Ehernet to my streamer. I use fiber conversion so no noise is transfered. It maybe true that storage is cheap but I hate to think of unpacking all my FLAC files to WAV again.
We've been using WAV files in the DJ World for years now. When playing on Good Big Soundsystems I have never really notice any difference between Flac and Wav only clear differences (poorer quality) with mp3 320
I cant understand also why people doenst invest in a dedicated storage, nowadays is super cheaper compared to the mp3 era, and its also worst now with streaming services that just suck
@@necrodh *truth 1:* high end/ hi fi systems are for specific and special purposes in the audio experience with quality and high fidelity. *truth 2:* there are specialized systems for make the music play, _moving kicking grooving_ and the party could be just with two Yorkville 18" and two mids 15" with pair of drivers tweeters. *truth 3:* there are systems for non pro, non demanding, consumer average from cheap to high fi inside the same segment, some brands offer their own basic or better version too. for party, cinema, good quality or good fidelity. when somebody accept this, then to choose the FLAC or WAV or the MP3 will be easier and funny. when some people goes beyond the reality mixing the Pro trying to fit with the Brand and playing special kind of music with a personal purpose for others: it is the eternal discussion.
True. Hard drives are cheap. Yes, we can get a lot of digital real estate cheaply. But home (or office) storage is not the only point of concern. To play my music in my cars I either play from a thumbdrive or my phone connected. They greatest storage that can be practically used is measured in hundreds of gigabytes, not terabytes.
Trying to fit WAV on even my 512GB z fold 5 has been tough, especially considering how big 4K video is getting. Makes flac a wonderful option. I play back using poweramp and it sound brilliant.
You'd think this would be a factor in the high end audio world, unless we're assuming we can all hermetically hide our servers in a specialized distribution closet somewhere.
Hey Paul, always had love for your videos but sometimes I feel that your opinions are oozing with privilege. Bandwidth and storage are not universally cheap. This may make sense for audiophiles in the developed world, but for some of us in the developing world lossless audio compression formats are pivotal to making the hobby more accessible. Even across the US, broadband accessibility is not guaranteed. The fact of the matter is that the benefits of FLAC, ALAC and other similar formats make everything cheaper and more accessible at very little extra processing cost. Makes a hell of a lot of sense to me.
the best format that ipod supports: WAV, ... AIFF. if storage is the issue maybe the AAC or MP3 .... I don't find usefull to have my iPod with all the songs and all my collection in the "best compressed format". I can change and update the playlist easily, to have all my playlists includes songs that I won't listen and fill my iPod, so just a few playlist in wav is enough for me.
@@bendermi I copied it from the apple website, 'cause it caused me interest too XD Frecuencia de respuesta: 20 Hz a 20,000 Hz Formatos de audio compatibles: AAC (8 a 320 Kbps), AAC protegida (del iTunes Store), HE-AAC, MP3 (8 a 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible (formatos 2, 3, 4, Audible Enhanced Audio, AAX y AAX+), Apple Lossless, *AIFF y WAV* while Apple Lossless is the apple version of FLAC, but it is limited and I find it hard to rip manage or convert (I mean is not very easy while you drink coke). 🧐
@@bendermi in "our" portable experience, I gossip: hard to find good headphones that I like. I don't like wireless, I like the 3.5mm and not easy to find even when I test models. I won't go for expensive and ultimate headphones, I've tested models average Sennheiser and are enough to me ! sad: my old ipod needs an external battery. maybe I will go for ipad, even so to listen and watch entertainment.
No. A bit stream coming from a FLAC has a set amount of data that represents the audio stream. Converting it to an equally lossless format does not add any additional audio data to that stream. Converting from one lossless file format to another lossless file form, by definition is lossless, translates the header that defines the file and how the bit the bit stream data is organized. A more visual example would be is to load a 2 mp cell file into Photoshop and then save it out with a much higher pixel count. I guarantee you that the photoshop version of that file is still going to look exactly like the original 2 mp but will consume massively more amounts of disk space.
@@katherinejohnson701 the Photoshop example is idiotic because what you describe would be interpolation and that in fact has an impact - lossless compression don't change anything
@@katherinejohnson701 Unfortunately your Photoshop image is not a good example. If you attempt to save a lower resolution image at a higher resolution you will make the "higher resolution" version look worse than the original - it's called pixellation and is the reason why image libraries sell images at different resolutions for different purposes - ie 72dpi for web use, 300dpi for print quality.
For all of you complaining about WAV not being able to contain embedded metadata, you need to check your facts again. I use Mp3tag to fully embed album art and other metadata into my wav files.
In the film postproduction industry a lot of us are migrating our sound libraries to FLAC simply because you get almost 2x the storage space out of your external hard drives without any impact to the original file.
And in the music industry, one of my DAWs (Reaper) can record FLAC natively. I ripped my CD collection to FLAC files. Outside of the synchronization capabilities a Broadcast WAV offers, WAV files need to start WAVing goodbye!
I enjoy FLAC personally, perhaps my rig isnt up to snuff, but I really cannot hear any considerable difference compared to Raw CD/WAV audio. For those who do hear a difference thats so intolerable in comparison, I highly recommend playing with the few other lossless codecs out there be it Monkey Audio (.APE) or Apples incarnation (ALAC) .
You can't hear a difference which exists - do your word documents in a zip archive look different than outside? FLAC is exactly the same, just optimized for audio data
I usually prefer FLAC because of the metadata and the sound is CD quality like WAV is. I burned both FLAC and WAV files to Audio CD and also played directly from the PC. And even my 12 year old PC has no issues with either formats at all. So a modern PC would not even break a sweat. Even a basic cheap smart TV etc plays FLAC pretty darn well without issues today. So in practice I really doubt it matters for the sound. But I also think that even if you don't always hear things a clearer path from source to speakers is always a benefit atleast for the equipment. To a degree though. But FLAC Vs. WAV is not one of those times it really matters.. And But it basicly takes the same amount of computer power to play them anyway so..
1. Maybe I don’t want to use 1TB of drive in purely storing wav. I’m the type that has storage anxiety. 2. Computer noise that dramatically affects audio. Never even knew they affected audio 3. FLAC decompression barely puts a strain on modern cpu’s 4. Have you heard of perception bias
I just can't believe that such simply task of unfolding the Flac file can add any relevant noise to the sound. Think about how many other harder processes is running when your device (anyone) is on, specially a PC.
Paul makes a good point about storage being cheap, and Internet download bandwidth is plentiful as well. I wager that in a blind properly administered test, nobody could consistently tell the difference between FLAC and WAV files, even on PS Audio's crazy awesome system, and that their guesses would statistically amount to a 50/50 coin toss at best. I will also go so far as to bet that most of us audio plebes couldn't reliably discern between a 320 kbps MP3 from WAV or FLAC file, even on PS Audio's mega system. It would be great fun to run a truly impartial and fully blind WAV vs. 320 kpbs MP3 test with Paul in the hot seat, with online bets placed on whether or not he could reliably tell the difference. Toss in a truly blind and impartial A/B test on a comparatively inexpensive mid tier Schitt, Topping or similar DAC for less than a grand vs. the latest 8K dollar DirectStream DAC while we are at it to really make this interesting - LMAO... My biggest objection to WAV is it doesn't natively support metadata, while FLAC does. Apparently there are ways to attach metadata to WAVs, but that requires using 3rd party programs and incurring brain damage, and I prefer stone cold easy and simply enjoying the music with as little BS as possible, so FLAC it is.
I think those with good hearing and if they have trained themselves to know what to hear for could tell which one sounds more real on such good systems. The leading edges of notes and the tonality is better, especially on percussive sounds like piano, the strike of strings on a guitar, or cymbals. But yes, most newbies probably can't reliably discern the difference in a blind test. Having that metadata in FLACs for discovery, sorting, rating, etc., is immeasurably important.
@@rosswarren436 stop talking nonsense - after decompress it's 100% identical because that's what the L for lossless means - how do you imagine that any golden ear or equipment could make a difference when the data ist bitwise identical?
@@Harald_Reindl I was comparing lossy 320Kbps mp3 (which Craig above mentioned) to FLAC (or wav) files. You are correct concerning FLAC and WAV being interchangeable given modern processing power. A FLAC is a WAV, just compressed in file size, but bit perfect when uncompressed.
@@rosswarren436 than state that when FLAC is the topic! 320 CBR is BTW pretty dumb - VBR in the highest quality setting is 16% smaller with identical or even better sound quality than 320
@@Harald_Reindl I was REPLYING to the comment by Craig. Thought that was in context. But yeah, VBR for mp3 is fine. It adjusts for the complexity of the waveforms on the fly and seems to be just about as good which is why sites like the ILMA (Internet Live Music Archive) use it for streaming and those wanting quickie downloads of show instead of snagging the much larger FLACs.
Flac was invented to solve storage issues when few years ago 1TB was very expensive that I couldn't afford. But of course now it has become cheap & affordable. It's not fair to say that flac is useless since now storage is cheap. Online streaming would still benefit from it even though Internet speed had improved a lot.
Although. I rip things uncompressed, AIFF or WAV, my music server would decompress before playing to the internal SSD that it actually plays from. I've experimented and hear no discernible difference into a 10K DAC. Oh, Paul, your new speakers intrigue me. I'm in Kansas City. I need to make my way out your way some time soon.
Apple does not charge for iCloud storage for purchased music you bought on Apple Music. All that is stored on Apple servers under your Apple Music account. Movies you purchase in ITunes Music application are stored on Apple servers for free in iCloud but not downloaded. You have to stream them back from your iCloud account. Movies are DRM protected, you do not own the movies you bought. Music you bought is DRM free. All your music downloads you bought are stored in the Apple Music folder on your computer. “MAKE SURE THAT MUSIC IS DOWNLOADED FIRST” you can choose the file formats “BEFORE” you download. You can drag and drop that folder to an external hard drive. I recommend people do this for albums that can and do go out of print on Apple Music. If you didn’t save it on an external drive, you will lose it along with your purchase. Be aware of that. You can also drop and drag that file to another music application as well as on the external drive. It is your responsibility to backup your purchased Apple Music. “Apple is not your babysitter” make Dam sure you know what you are doing and how to do it. Any screw ups on your part are on you.
Just decoded a 1min 35 second flac file to PCM in 0.196 seconds on my 2012 laptop. I can't see how that would cause some "noise" on the line. There is probably more work going on in the background moving your file from disk to the USB port than the decoding of the file. Even if you where concerned about that overhead at that speed you could load the whole track into RAM decode it in one go before it's played and not notice a sizable delay. In reality that is probably what is going on. The computer will load a chunk of FLAC file into RAM, decode that chunk, then send it on so for the vast majority of the the time there will be no decoding going on, the CPU will be asleep waiting for the data to be streamed to the output. There maybe some argument about why bother in this day and age but it's not because it sounds better.
Why I use FLAC: 1. Decoding FLAC is trivial. IBM XT computers don't sweat doing it. It doesn't introduce comper-ish noise into the stream. The stream is bit for bit identical so where is the noise? Any hardware that has to "work" at decoding FLAC (if you can even find any) isn't worth having. 2. I have a large music collection (10KCDs + several hundred DVDs/BRs.) It's close to 3TB in size as FLAC files. Since it's mostly classical, it compresses very well. (I've had some disks that compress 84%...mono piano). Converting to WAV would increase the size to well over 7TB. 3. FLAC's meta-data/tagging schema is infinitely superior to that of WAV files. It's simple, easy to work with and universally supported. So the real question is, why would you double+ the size of your music collection and use a poor/non-existent metadata/tagging system for the exact same quality of sound??
The majority of my files are in AIFF, since I use Mac, which is similar to WAV and allows some metadata’s. I did convert almost all files to AIFF, even the ones I downloaded as FLAC. Sometimes, FLAC is the only format available to stream/download so I listen to it that way. Keep in mind playing a pcm cd or sacd still sound better than the AIFF or WAV on a good transport/dac. It’s good to have all options and try them out.
FLAC is just like a ZIP file, you get exactly the original content with not even 1 bit being different. People hearing the difference is just Placebo effect.
Paul I really appreciate your experienced points of view and effort making these videos. I watch them almost daily. I have what I consider a pretty resolving system. I’m old so I don’t trust my ears but my daughter, who is a musician and her friends have very critical ears. They could not hear a difference when blind tested.
because there is none. why everybody that claims such big differences never provide instrumental measurements (which are perfectly doable with current technoogy) or simply does not try to make a blind test? to be honest i think that is perfectly fine to believe in audiophile myths, spend a lot of money is esoteric stuff and so on, if this gives you more listening pleasure. but it would be nicer doing it with a properly connected brain :)
Storage wasn't always dirt cheap. I remember paying at least $200 for a 250 mb HDD when I was collecting mp3's. Storing at 320 KBPS was a big deal over standard mp3's and storing in FLAC was ridiculous. Not to mention trying to download these large files. For that reason I rarely paid for a digital file and mostly spent my money on cd's and lp's. I'd rip my cd's to mp3 for portable use or to listen on my computer. I'd also make compilation cd's for the car. I don't know why someone would pay a $1 a song on mp3 when you could buy the cd for the same or less and have a physical copy of it. I guess it's convenience or if you simply have money to burn. I would download mp3's to explore and then buy the hard copy of what I liked. That's what I do now with subscription services. Now it looks like we can bypass files like FLAC and go completely lossless with digital files now that storage is cheap. I'm still not there with streaming as being my primary source. I'm still waiting for it to get a bit better.
similar tban I do. I buy songs or some albums when I like them (if I like them). I don"t pay for spotyf or amazon or any streaming: a waste to pay for thousands of songs I don't like, while less price I can buy the songs I like. from my cassettes, cds, vinyl or PC or some purchased files, , I convert to WAV and I burn my personal CD collections. sometimes the mp3 version for play or storange for different purposes. FLAC to me is useless while I can have WAV, and I don't notice the difference when I play the mp3 version, yes you got to pay attention to hear some difference but it is for listening and sing or dance, not for analyze.
@@Harald_Reindl why do you consider my music is a waste of space? should I save my files as you want or as I want? will you impose how many files in AAC, MP3 and WAV should I have? have you heard the difference between some MP3 versions and WAV version of the same song I have? *if I save some songs in WAV format, why or what for do you imagine I do that?* 2000 EUR in storage? a very bad and wrong setup, you should learn more about RAID or Shared storage. with 350 EUR you could save the entire and complete albums collection of 140 artists in WAV format. *do you have all that?* I understand the why your frustration and angry after know you made the wrong setup. just reply, if you are enough serious and mature: why do you consider my music is a waste of space? *if I save some songs in WAV format, why or what for do you imagine I do that?* just I beg for you answer that, no more. I bet you won't reply as a real person.
@@georgemartinezza the audio signal of WAV and FLAC is identical - wasting storage space is idiotic and if it's only the benefit of improved wear levelling on the SSD device
I store all my digital media on uncompressed ticker tape reels and punchcards for that "papery" feel in the audio. But seriously... anyone that A - B's flac vs wav and notices a difference is just undermining everything they have said about music and proving that they are full of it.
Good point that HDD/SSD are very cheap nowadays. FLAC encoding @ home isn't really needed anymore, if not needing the tags. The question is, can all your music players, TVs and stuff play bare WAV files? For the same reason I think HEVC encodings take more effort and energy than AVC encodings and the power/energy invested isn't justified in my opinion. If not HEVC is your main source ofc. But HEVC also has a lower quality as AVC. You could even say the time wasted in using a different codec isn't worth it (anymore since TBs of HDD/SSD space is cheap). For servers, the whole internet traffic and streaming services ofc. it's a difference using billions of files each hour. That's why AAC/M4A/MP4 lossy is being used. CZcams is one good example. In the Corona lockdown Netflix chose to stop 4K streaming, because the bandwith of the internet was too weak. The hint about tags also may be important to some people and players. Do any player support cue or m3u files? If so, I'll be fine with adding one big list per album and keep WAV. The time you need to encode stuff is worth more than a bigger HDD/SSD. It's not that the PC is slow, but your time invested to set up things. At home I'd use WAV or maybe FLAC, if Traktor DJ studio can't read the metadata of WAV/CUE/M3U(8). But I already had headaches making my own CUE/M3U files, if the album is one big file. You could need some helper apps for it. Using Traktor or Djay is another use case we have with digital music files, not just hearing Hi-Fi albums. Using WAV at least saves time there to load/analyze tracks. It's some seconds saved per track. Electromagnetic noise is an interesting factor. But if you start this topic, it's gonna be complicated, a science in itself, EMC (electromagnetic compatibility) is a real factor nowadays to not disturb other machines wirelessly. That's why you shield, use net filters and galvanically separate. Manufacturers made "clock spread spectrum" to widen the frequencies of CPUs to lower the amplitude of noise. That's what I saw in PC BIOS like 2 decades ago. I didn't understand back then, but now I do. In fact they added virtually more noise in new CPUs this way, but with much lower amplitude to lower the impact. To limit the impact, in theory you'd also need to disable "normal" frequency hopping / throttling in CPUs like power savings aka c/p/halt states, which will send out some spikes, which may disturb some other chips in the signal processing. But also disable multi core CPUs and let only one process run on one dedicated CPU. This will reduce potential micro-stutterings, crackling, latency, jitter at least. Sharing one process like decoding a WAV/FLAC/MP3 or whatever file between multiple CPU cores adds IRQ times and this adds latency, cracklings and so on. But you can't simply control any part, because you have to use CPUs or dedicated standalone devices which exists on the market, not create your own CPUs, lol. But those are getting more and more integrated, multi-functional, so they went multi-core and that creates more noise at all, compared to old 1 core CPUs w/o energy saving capabilities. But as said, the old ones didn't use clock spread spectrum, created a high amplitude noise at some frequency, which may disturb one machine. Like DECT phones or Satellite dish receivers disturb themselves on one HF frequency, interrupting the stream in the worst case. You could try to use a CPU with realtime kernel and run the CPU at let's say fixed 3 GHz, but you can't control processes being switched to different CPU cores nor disable boost frequencies, which die CPU does by itself. So there's always some noise even in idle mode. Ofc. you can measure the HF noise which chips transmit, that's how people cracked 4096 bit encryption by scanning for MOSFET signals or intercepted CRT signals wirelessly decades ago. The best thing is to discard any not needed electronical devices from your music room. Disable WLAN, Bluetooth, phones, unneeded PCs. Remember the phone interference with speakers? That's different, but also impacts the sound ofc.
Seriously doubting this, but either way, I dont think offering WAV instead of FLAC is a big issue, since you can just easily encode a WAV file to FLAC with Freac (I think it was called that, short for exact audio copy?) and it shouldn't take more than a minute. Slight extra work for the user/customer, but it's also pretty trivial. The encoding shouldn't be as intensive as some of those lossy encodings, so it should be faster as well to encode to FLAC. Also, I use FLAC to archive the music, and to occasionally listen to it in the living room with speakers. For more critical listening, I just pop in a CD, as 99% of my rips are from my own CDs. For some quick sessions or background noise when I do stuff, I check my FLAC folder.
What if I download some FLAC files and then convert them to WAV, then secretly copy them in WAV format to another PC but pretend they were always WAV, will my other PC know I was lying to it and make the files sound worse? Maybe I should "burn-in" all my FLAC files and use Audioquest ethernet cables to download them from my router and then that would make them sound all "natural" again. Does he have any evidence for the claim that "unfolding" a FLAC file takes any meaningful processor overhead? Is there anything he can point to that compares how much "horsepower" is being used in opening either file or is he just totally making that up. Is he just assuming that since it takes some extra processing to convert FLAC to WAV, it therefore must somehow change the sound quality? This is why it's often unhelpful to use gut feelings or subjective intuitions to make objective scientific claims. Unless you need to make some snake oil to sell more products.
More from this site: "You already know that FLAC has limits on its sampling rates and bit-depth, whereas WAV has no such restrictions. What does this mean in the context of the quality of your audio files? WAV is uncompressed and so retains everything regarding sample rates and bit-depth. That’s also why it takes up more space than a FLAC file. Is WAV better than FLAC for this reason? Not necessarily. While FLAC will lose specific details throughout the compression process, it is still lossless. There is no substantial quality loss in FLAC files." The key word here is "Substantial".
While you could convert your compressed FLAC or ALAC local library to uncompressed WAV or AIFF files, you can’t change what streaming providers like TIDAL and Qobuz send you (hint: they use FLAC). It’s better to have a solution that handles the inevitable lossless compression in your system without compromises. Today, such conversion is trivial for even the lowest of processors. This is a non-issue. FLAC is after all the Free LOSSLESS Audio Code. Yes you can buy cheap storage but Internet bandwidth is not "cheap" yet, so all streaming services that I know of (other that stupid LOSSY Spotify) stream audio in FLAC, so you might as well have a system in place that can do that conversion well and feed it to your DAC.
He's right about the computer noise. Listening to flac files if I turn up the volume and place my ear by the tweeter I can totally hear AOL trying to dial up.
Advantages of using FLAC: 1. FLAC is smaller than WAV. 2. FLAC can be tagged with metadata better than WAV. 3. The sound of FLAC is identical to the sound of WAV. 4. Decoding a FLAC is nothing for today's PCs. We're no longer in the 1980's! Digital audio is mathematical. The information code is the same in FLAC as it is in WAV, it's just archived to reduce its size to about 66%.
Interesting, coming from a mp3 point it makes not much sense, however coming from a pure source with no compression place, yes, simpler is usually better. At one point I was using Pi-MusicBox streamer/network player, an update had it not liking wav files, so I started flac-ing stuff, so kind of forced over. Then I discovered Volumio, now flac has kind of left my radar. As a provider, I would have thought you would embrace flac, but then advise customers to convert it (as per this vid). Less strain on your webservers and links etc. 50% load for the same sales, more room for more customers at zero cost.
Hey Paul, you probably already know this, but be careful about what drives you buy. 1TB for $50 is a bit cheap and likely makes performance compromises. Typically, they are fast enough until their small buffers are overrun, at which point they perform pretty bad. Good performance 1TB drive is about $80+. (Not considering USB drives. That interface is slow enough that buffers don't over load.) You overall point still stands, of course. Even $80 for 1TB of music storage is a bargain.
And here I am involuntarily converting my 24/192 wav vinyl rips into FLAC because WAV still doesn't quite support ID3 right, which confuses the living daylights out of the media server software on my NAS. I hate it, but right now track orders are completely random, no matter what I do. If anyone has a better idea, yell!
So. I just actually (for the first time!) tried to prove the theory by turning some of my WAV files into FLAC. Yeah, it's not an option. If you think this is not a thing, you haven't even TRIED listening. There's absolutely no way I'll settle for this. I'm shocked!
There's more; Just compared level 5 flac compression to level 1, level 1 is an incredible about better. Stereo imaging is back and so is the attack. Yet, the original WAV file the FLAC is created from dissolves way better in the upper frequencies. The FLAC file hasn't lost anything, but the sound has. There's still unfortunately no way I'll settle for FLAC.
A key claim made in this video is FLAC files sound inferior to WAV files because the preparation sequence used to get a FLAC file ready to stream introduces noise in the audio stream sounds like tinnitus. My understanding is processing a FLAC file occurs in total before the is transmitted to the DAC, a process that applies equally to a WAV, FLAC, ALAC, AIFF and so on. There might be an extremely remote chance in the brief amount of time it takes to load a file into RAM could influence the sound but claiming that this noticeably degrades the sound is an extremely high bar to get over. I challenge the presenter to perform a double blind A/B test between formats to test this premise and then get back to us with the results. I am going to go out on a limb here and saw it off: There will be zero detectable difference by a listener under these conditions. Plus FLAC's robust ability to add metadata and at the same time consume less disk space is a huge win over WAV files. If you prefer WAV files, knock yourself out, they sound just fine - that choice comes down to personal preference and I have no opinion about that choice.
Linux has numerous free open source cross platform media software available. There are over 40,000 free open source cross platform software programs. You have to use patience finding what you can use for your particular needs. I am more than well aware what a pain in the ass large media files that are unorganized can be. That is the main reason for metadata software to help with organizing files. You have to be connected to the internet while organizing your library using media software. If an album cover cannot be found, you can create your own album cover in numerous ways. Either drag and drop or copy and paste.
I can hear no difference between cd and flac on my system, raspberry pi running Volumio vs denon cd player, I can hear a noticeable degradation in mp3 and steaming vs cd
I respectfully disagree! Processing power is not an issue and it buffers ahead. A hundred dollar phone can decode flac effortlessly these days. If you have thousands and thousands of albums space is still a concern. Let's not even talk about how large uncompressed PCM surround sound audio can be. Metadata is a huge factor too...if you want metadata on completely uncompressed audio you need to use AIFF not wav if you aren't using flac or similar lossless compression formats. But one thing we can all agree with is that mp3 and other lossy formats should be a thing of the past!
Streaming Services have to use FLAC or another way to store in compressed form. Imagine the tons of storage required for TIDAL, QOBUZZ, etc carry millions on titles and available for download immediately and timely. For portability, there is zero argument for WAV. Are you kidding?
the guy converted Mp3s from a compact disk to WAV. In what way would that sound any different? Mp3 is compressed. Converting it to WAV doesn't uncompress it. The details that were lost are totally destroyed. You can't get it back.
I remember when mp3 was starting to become mainstream and it killed audio quality so much! Going from a crisp CD to people listening to horrible 96 or 128kbps mp3 files was the equivalent of taking a Diamond and overlapping diarrhea over it. I’m so glad people finally noticed that and are now downloading songs in much higher quality. But yes, it was 5 years of torture hearing people in their cars listening to such crappy mp3 files.
Now we have people with music screaming out of useless miniature speakers on mobiles phones - the world is getting worse. Then you go to a once large HiFi provider and only find Bluetooth junk, yes getting worse.
mp3 file = ~9,000kb - same data rendered as flac = ~ 45,000kb - yes, not that much of a diffi in (perceived) sound quality, but in storage. mp3 fools our ears, flac needn't.
FLAC is designed for portable hi-res players where 1tb of storage would be impossible, in any case the soundcards are now responsible for decompression now they have their own built in audio processors
flac decompression is a trivial task for any modern computer and by this I mean pretty much any device down to a £5 Raspberry Pi Zero. For a system admin like myself, the suggestion that a system would output different data to an audio device or emit "noise" that wasn't there before because it had to decompress the payload is hilarious.
Wav is pcm data in a file container, flac is the same but in a compressed container. The flac format also supports tagged metadata in the file header as standard which wav does not, imagine having a large wav library with no tags and dealing with cue files, equally hilarious. I wouldn't buy a file format that can't support editable metadata.
Marketing guff to sell stuff. Even bats couldn't hear the difference between FLAC and WAV.
You make some great points my friend
WAV supports metadata. Please check your facts.
@@Luvdac62 Limited. The only "data" the shows up on my streamer from WAV files is the file name and track length. Maybe somehow I'm not doing it right, but sure seems unintuitive if it's possible.
@Osiris Marbles There should be no difference between flac and wav as far as metadata capacity goes. Even when I convert flac to wav using dbpoweramp, all flac data is transferred to the resultant wav file. Wav files are equally editable in mp3tag just like their flac counterparts.
I can't hear any difference between FLAC & WAV, not to say others can't, but I'm more than happy with FLAC 😀
The whole idea of FLAC, and the L in the acronym, is that it's supposed to be lossless compression. An 8MB song in FLAC vs a 32MB song in WAV is a big storage savings and for some people that is what matters more.
neither can I, but perhaps some streamers pass on said additional (notional) noise created by a more busy processor to the digital output in one form or another- so, highly dependent on streamer and DAC’s susceptibility to such addl noise.
@@weevilsnitz when storage matters. Yes. 😷👍
Because there is no sonic difference.
@@georgemartinezza and transfer. It's takes 4 times longer to transfer 4 times the information.
Decoding flac is nothing for a modern CPU, I highly doubt it adds "computer noise" vs wav
Exactly. Of course manufacturers like to make you think you're missing out on something so they can sell a new product.
@@electro-soma There is no such product that plays FLAC but not also WAV, so what's the argument ?
Yes… FLAC file compression/decompression is asymmetric: it is trivial for a computing device to decompress FLAC; FLAC compression, depending on the level of optimality chosen, can be compute intensive, but that is irrelevant to playback.
@@electro-soma 😷 the world of marketing.
manufacturers, brands, audio shops, some youtubers (fortunelly the professionalism of PS Audio doesn't)
@@Baerchenization WAV is pointless, that's the argument. It's not better sonically and it's inferior in every other way to FLAC so what's the point in it anymore?
FLAC is nice when we take our music with us on a portable device. Not only for space issues, but for metadata as well. I've done A-B comparisons and can't hear any difference. Maybe that because I'm kind of old or just don't have high enough resolution in my home system. For that, maybe I should be grateful 🙂
There is no difference between the sound of WAW and flac. )
And what isn't there is impossible to hear. )
An old music loving friend finally came out as an audiophile several years ago. I'm sure if he ever added digital music files to his system, he would never use FLAC.
You can't hear it because the difference is NULL...simple...this topic would be real 20+ years ago when noisy PCs using a lot of power for simple stuff with poor filtering on the power rails and with some sound card on the motherboard existed.
you'd need superhuman hearing and a godly sound system to be able to notice any difference on maybe 1/1000 tracks, and only if you're A/Bing ; I wouldn't worry
Wow! Never realised this could cause so much argument! But here’s a thought…if there’s no difference in sound between one and the other why are many of you so bothered that some of us choose WAV? Given that I think if you prefer FLAC you should absolutely use that!
This is the second video Paul has made that does flac a disservice. When flac is decompressed it is bit for bit an exact copy of the CD. Perhaps, perhaps there is some argument to say that your streamer doing the decompression/decoding might get things wrong but units like that surely have to be very uncommon these days and I bet it takes relatively as much cpu power to read a WAV as it does to convert a flac.
So, you think that the other benefits of FLAC is better than listening to the better WAV file. When is it that sound quality of music isn't the most important thing? You may be right in what you disagree with Paul, EXCEPT THE FACT THAT WAV IS BETTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@Myron Helton EXCEPT THE FACT YOU'RE TALKING OUT OF YOUR A$$ AND DONT KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT.
No computer noise is added when reading flac. ) That's first of all.
Secondly, waw is also a packaging, and requires decoding, just like flac. That is, we can encode music to flac, we can encode to waw, but both have to be decoded when listening.
Good luck, Paul. )
Sorry about my terrible English.
If there is a difference in sound between FLAC and equivalent WAV sound, there is a problem somewhere else in the system. The reason to use FLAC, even when storage is so cheap, is to make room for DSD files. 😁
The only possible difference I could think of are buffer errors if that tiny tiny amount of cpu usage caused the buffer to empty and even then you can increase your buffer.
@@sammyvincent6701 these days the FLAC file is decompressed at a whole within the blink of an eye on a smartwatch
@@Harald_Reindl even in some hypothetical universe where this added some actual latency you'd just need to increase your buffer size and then there would be 0 difference in timing
@@sammyvincent6701 again: the whole damned FLAC file is decoded in one step and uncompressed PCM as it was a WAV file is the result - no need for buffering at all - the data of a laugable tiny uncompressed audiofile fits in the cache of a smartwatch
You're right, but what about the metadata. Wav sucks and AIF is a little bit better, but nothing if compared to Flac. And if storage is not an issue anymore (I agree with you) so it is for the very simple computing effort necessary to unfold the Flac into PCM.
Not counting that a regular computer can unfold the whole file BEFORE playing it in a very short time.
Yeah. Better transports should be made. Or make a new version of WAV that does support metadata.
Not sure if the metadata issue is still relevant… my Innuos Zenith Mk3 has no problem retrieving it all when ripping CDs into WAV
@@joel_hifi1994 It is probably relying on a web based solution retrieving metadata from a webserver somewhere. Works fine on your streamer.
well if your system/ears/brain enables you to hear a difference (my combo here does not really) then there might be the option to use a less compressed FLAC file. Easy to try out..
@@D1N02 No one needs WAV. It's Microsoft guff for computers.
Sorry Paul, but for me there is no difference. Maybe because I don’t use cable lifters 🫢. Storage size may not matter that much, but metadata handling is crucial. In terms of metadata tagging both WAV and AIFF suck. Tagging FLAC and ALAC is a breeze. Concerning computer horsepower for decoding FLAC, that must be 0.0000000..HP for a modern CPU, in other words: nothing. And by the way, both FLAC and WAV are codecs containing PCM files. So even WAV needs to be decoded by the CPU before PCM can be played.
Don't worry you can't hear what isn't there lol. This dude's a snake oil salesman
Audiophiles only listen to 100 different tracks which let shine their hifi, that's why space don't matter - people using their hifi for listening to music have larger libraries with redundant storage and multiple backups - with wav I would need 7 TB raw storage and mirrored 14 TB, the same again on my mirrored machine offsite and than two times for my offline backups on different locations {and no after all that years I won't start again setup computers where a dead disk requires more work than pull out, replace and continue)
@Sammy Vincent I believe he's way off base on this video, but he's normally pretty reasonable.
Done correctly, decompressing FLAC should provoke fewer IO operations than loading the same music from WAV,
and IO operations provoke strongest digital noise.
how can you decompress FLAC correctly?
@@georgemartinezza "correctly" is the default here, so the question should rather be "how can you decompress FLAC incorrectly?"
Such situations could only be created by incorrect configurations, e.g. if you use an external library for decoding FLAC files, purge it from memory after reading one file, then load it again for each new file. But even then the external library should still be in the disk cache of the computer, so no new I/O ops should be needed unless someone tried to "optimize" the system in a bad way, e.g. by disabling this cache to save memory.
You're right about I/O -- these people who talk about the extra processing seem to have no idea who data finds its way through a computer. Plus, storage devices are typically the slowest thing on a computer.
@@dougschneider8243 maybe you are an ancient human from lost civilizations.
the storage in a computer no matters if it is slow in HDD or faster in SSD.
if you don't know please don't say anything, you only show how zombignorant you are.
@@georgemartinezza You should perhaps learn how to read and write before you say anything. Read my post above -- I mentioned that I/O from a storage device is among the slowest of the processes in a computer. I was mentioning it because of people claiming uncompressing is a difficult task and therefore THAT changes the sound. I don't believe any of it changes the sound. As I said, you should brush up on your ability to read and write before hurling insults.
I'm going to disagree on this one. The CPU resources to decode flac are trivial. There's no reason to double the length of my file copies and operations just because I want WAV, the FLAC files are large enough! What you're missing is that files on the hard drive are not a static thing, they must be backed up and maintained. This is what takes the real bandwidth. FLAC has some built-in features which help with file maintenance, such as a CRC of the audio at the time of encoding. This allows one to scan one's collection periodically looking for errors.
Space and bandwidth. You can always convert all of your FLAC files to WAV so you don't have to decompress while playing. It's your gear that's degrading the sound, not the storage format.
What exact modern gear (not a PC from 2 decades ago) is degrading the sound due to FLAC playback file decompression? If you analyze any modern SOC system load into the various software processes, you will see that FLAC decompression is NOTHING in comparison with other things the processor do. Even the IP or USB interface of your device is running a lot more instructions just to handle the data protocols. And the list goes on and on in what happens within a modern SOC software stack. Anyone can hear when you navigate in the menus, cause that should also be audible from the CPU and GPU cores doing their processing, if this was a real topic LOL...of course not. This topic will not pass a blind test for sure.
@@ThinkingBetter We are dealing with high end audio here where everything it critical and not always measurable even though you can hear it.
@@D1N02 Of course we are. I'm an audiophile and work in audio R&D. Some things can not be easily measured (e.g. sound stage depth), of course, but interference issues (what this is) of electrical noise from a modern CPU causing interference in analog circuits most certainly can. This issue is not a real topic.
However, it's plausible that a FLAC and WAV file of the same track can sound different if there is some software bug or SRC involved in the processing of the data. But then it is about bad engineering (software). With bad engineering, many things can be argued, but I thought we were talking about audiophile products???
@@D1N02 you are fools
@@Harald_Reindl are you here to insult me AGAIN? Harald?
Nowadays it’s trivial for modern silicon to unpack FLAC format and the DAC will play perfectly the same when it gets exactly the same data. Processing noise is not an audible thing…except in some old PC from a couple of decades or more ago. The SNR of modern DACs is way way above human hearing abilities with typically 120dB, so this is not a real topic. Show me a setup with FLAC de-compression represented on the DAC analog output as a noise residual exceeding the same track played as WAV. No, any modern CPU or SOC runs much more code doing stuff for the GUI and overall operating system stack. Unfortunately, software processing audio can have some bugs and perhaps that can cause a difference, but nowadays that would be unusual. Modern data processing is highly reliable and modern processing is not yielding audible noise on the analog path, unless bad engineering is involved.
Any difference in audibility is imagined. Concerns about computer horsepower are as outdated as those about storage and bandwidth. Certainly no reason to be concerned.
Storage space for high definition WAV and DSD files may be inexpensive for home user but perhaps not for those who sell downloads on line. They have to pay for both the storage and the bandwidth.This also holds true for on line streaming. In those cases the saving may make the difference between staying in business or not. Afterall downloads is a pretty small segment of the market.I have been listening to FLAC based files for a number of years and don't believe there is any noticeable difference between WAV vs FLAC that is unfolded to wav and then goes through my DAC and then to my amplifier. That's something to remember. No one can 'listen' to FLAC or even WAV or DSD for that matter. It all has to be converted to analog. The computer resources needed to decode it are minimal. They were more than adequate 10+ years ago and the technology has moved along considerably since then.
Storage is still "stupidly cheap" but I don't necessarily want to keep spending money on storage. If it's "bit for bit" then there is literally no reason, that's the end of the conversation. To have good Metadata for less space and less money when the files end up "bit for bit", as you said, then there's no reason for WAV at this point. "computerish noise" isn't there if it's actually "bit for bit" coming out of the DAC in the end.
There's even a buffer in there so the timing doesn't matter, but yeah essentially
@@sammyvincent6701 which is funny when Paul has talked about their DACs being so good dealing with jitter and such.
@@weevilsnitz Paul has no clue when it comes do digital - what do you expect from a monkey stating "it's bit-perfect but the bits have noise?" when in the real world a bit has no space for noise
Storage is cheap, but it's not infinite! Compression to FLAC loses nothing, changes nothing, affects nothing, and there is no reason whatsoever to keep WAV rather than use FLAC. When you start storing over 100,000 hi-resolution tracks (as I have) then you realise very quickly that uncompressed WAV is NOT the way to go, and that the compressed BUT IDENTICAL FLAC option is the only sensible option. I have a 3TB NAS drive, and if I used WAV it would be over capacity already. There is no difference - none - in the sound quality of the same file stored as FLAC or WAV. It's time to stop confusing compressed with lossy. Lossless is lossless, whether it is FLAC or WAV.
There's also the back up factor. The time it takes to transfer your music files to a new backup if the old one has a disk that is beginning to fail is critical. WAV takes about 4 times as long.
@@captainwin6333 wav can be on other formats. A rotting disc can't be transferred either way.
The difference in sound quality between wav and flac will be dependent on hardware and software factors. FLAC was specifically designed for easy decompression over 20 years ago. Today's processors will have no difficulty decompressing flac. RAM buffer memory has improved. Also, MPD has evolved and improved over the years, with better buffer design. Once flac is decompressed into a buffer, it's the same data as wav. If you haven't recently compared wav and flac, listen again.
The cpu power needed to unpack flac is negligible and it was so for cpu's 20 years ago so there's no need for a new comparison. Also there's no difference in sound quality between flac and wav, after flac has been unpacked it is identical to the original wav file.
I’ve purchased a few flac files which won’t work on iTunes (music). When converted to WAV the files bit depth goes from 24 to 18 but keeps their sample size, 96k I think. Is this because the bit depth was artificially bumped up? My app provider hasn’t answered. The music seems to function okay at 18 bit though. I believe true 24 bit would make your ears bleed. Answers appreciated.
iTunes does not support FLAC - it has it's own Apple-friendly version, ALAC. Any conversion you are doing sis user-defined - if you set whatever software you are using to do the converting to do maintain the sample rate and bit depth of the original FLAC file, then you will get identical files in ALAC. Just to reassure you, 24-bit does not make your ears bleed.
Looks like I have to make another one of these FLAC vs. WAV files on top of the one I published yesterday. Such a misunderstanding here -- and from a manufacturer! The argument is that the uncompression is not a "nothing task." Actually, it is -- as someone pointed out in the comments already, it's a "trivial task" for any computer. But here's not what's accounted for -- the file might have to be uncompressed by the computer, but since it's roughly two-thirds the size on the drive, it takes the computer less time (and resources) to read the file. So you have the same sort of savings in terms of computer horsepower there. And since transferred data involves potentially a drive that's external, or data riding from an internal drive over the circuits, who's to say which is really more difficult. The point is, the uncompression is a ridiculous premise for a supposed difference in sound that, if testing is done fairly, doesn't really exist. Watch this is you want to see the only real reason to rip to WAV, which Paul McGowan does actually begin with: czcams.com/video/Lgk3p-JM-Rk/video.html
I’m confused. My understanding is that my computer does the file decoding and my Dac produces the music. So my DAC receives the same information wether it comes from a flac or wav file (losseless). So why would the Dac produce a different sound from this info in its buffer? Because the noise from the computer transfers somehow to the Dac?
To answer your two questions: it doesn't and it doesn't. There's a lot of misinformation regarding this subject, not helped by this video that suggests some sort of added noise, which is nonsense. Audiophiles have to justify their huge expenses...
I am looking for a good FUC ( Flac Unfolding Codec)
Flack Unfolding Codec Knowledge is something we all need
Is it possible to stream DoP live via internet radio broadcast?
I have ripped my music every which-a-way. I don't care about file size, but I do care about having metadata. And since iPhone and iPad are my main streamers, I was happy with M4A files. Now I'm confused.
same here.
I just burn CDs from mp3, m4a or aac to WAV, just with songs I like for personal albums collections with more quality or WAV with little adjustment in tje software if it was necessary.
@@clickbeetle2720 meeoww : D
that's true. commonly the songs I sellect from MP3 or M4A (whatever) are as they are and so we can't add info if it does not exist. some songs even in official youtube channel display: "this is the recorded song, no original exists" (oo! in terms of audio.
some files are good enough in WAV without need any plugin to apply.
other songs I've found are a mess of manipulation, the most common are "the cut in 0 dB like the grass to prevent the clipping" ( ooh really? o0!
in terms of compression or loseless and bits: Once some songs are converted in WAV they appear in 16 bits. I add some equalizer minimal touch if it is needed, sometimes a little bit of gain +.5 o +1.0 dB, sometimes I reduce the peak of -.3 o 0 dB to -1 dB, it depends how the song comes, it increases the bits to 24 and the WAVE displayed (and it spectrum) increases a little for a better sound, _almost_ noticieable when you listen, sometimes yes, the enhancement is very necessary and with just a few EQ the differernce is very wide.
of course, it depends the original song, and I don't do that with all my music, just the sellected personal playlist .
to the extremes (not the song by Billy, no XD ) xtreme example:
a popular old rock urban artist in Mexico recorded a lot of his famous songs just with a portable recorder on tape, we could add all the bits and EQ or plugins, maybe you can get a new version, but losing the original I suppose.
I see most of the points I was going to raise in response to this have already been mentioned, but I'll go with the big one.
WAV is terrible for a music library because it can't store any metadata. I suppose if you use roon maybe it'll be able to identify and catalog your WAV music collection but I'm not 100% certain even that will work. Stick with something with metadata. If you think decompressing a lossless file adds noise, use AIFF and take control of your library.
"WAV is terrible for a music library because it can't store any metadata. "
Having that metadata in FLACs for discovery, sorting, rating, etc., is immeasurably important.
Counterargument size:
$50 for 1TB is for rotating hard drives. You don't want mechanically rotating things, because those make more noise than the decompression of FLAC to PCM can ever create on any computer built within the last 15 years.
I just paid slightly less than $50 for a 256GB microSD card for my growing collection of music. And I need two cards for the two devices I usually use. Additionally I do backups, which require the same disk space twice again.
The top-100 FLAC albums I listen to use about 50GB of space, with the majority being CD quality, but a growing number have 24bit bit depth and 48/96/192kHz sampling rate, so even with 1TB disk space you could just store about 2000 albums with this mix ratio.
Additionally Octave Records now sell PCM352 albums. Megan Burtt's album "Shelter" is 3.7GB in FLAC format and would be more than 6GB in WAV format. So my poor little 256GB microSD cards could either store about 70 FLAC albums or about 40 WAV albums of this quality!
To sum it up: Size is still a factor.
Counterargument noise:
Maybe even transferring fewer kilobytes (i.e. using FLAC) from SSD or via USB/network has positive impact on the sound, especially when you want gapless playback and the device needs to open the next audio file?
P.S.: Despite my criticism: I really like your videos. Even if I don't always agree with you, they make me think, which is probably a good thing 🧠
I don't understand people's issue with traditional hard drives. I buy good quality ones and yes they cost more but I've never had one fail and I'm never noticed any issues of excess noise or anything that intrudes on my music enjoyment.
I mean I understand solid state is supposed to be better but I haven't noticed much of a difference, at least not really from a sound quality perspective.
@@Audiorevue If they work fine for you, that's very good. I had some failing hard disk drives over the past decades, but I wasn't talking about failing drives. My point is: I certainly can't hear the difference between playing a WAV and a FLAC file and I doubt anyone can in a blind test unless something else is wrong in the player, but I certainly can hear spinning hard drives (the high-pitched sound of their rotation _and_ the bumps/clicks of head movement), unless they are very silent (which usually are 2.5" drives, where larger sizes have other attributes I don't like) and are more then about 2 meters (6ft) away.
I still use hard disks at home, one is a small and silent USB drive attached to my router (i.e. far away from me) and the others are usually powered down (spinning down when not in use, removable HDDs in a drive cage, external USB HDDs).
But if HDDs work fine for you, Paul or anyone else: Lucky you, you have cheap(er) access to large amounts of storage!
I have FLAC on my NAS. Roon decompresses it and sends it via Ehernet to my streamer. I use fiber conversion so no noise is transfered. It maybe true that storage is cheap but I hate to think of unpacking all my FLAC files to WAV again.
"noise in wav, flac, aac or mp3 files"
it is interesting. 🤔
We've been using WAV files in the DJ World for years now. When playing on Good Big Soundsystems I have never really notice any difference between Flac and Wav only clear differences (poorer quality) with mp3 320
Thank you for trusting your ears and not conmen lol
Hey Paul does WTF means what's the frequency?
I use WAV lossless. CD quality. No funny business.
perfect
You don't have to compress with FLAC. For my favorite CDs, I rip them to FLAC with no compression.
I cant understand also why people doenst invest in a dedicated storage, nowadays is super cheaper compared to the mp3 era, and its also worst now with streaming services that just suck
🤷
I can't understand why some people in _"audiophile world"_ worry about storage, space and Compressed Formats.
@@georgemartinezza ejoy your consumer experience then and avoid been in audiophile enviroments
@@necrodh *truth 1:* high end/ hi fi systems are for specific and special purposes in the audio experience with quality and high fidelity.
*truth 2:* there are specialized systems for make the music play, _moving kicking grooving_ and the party could be just with two Yorkville 18" and two mids 15" with pair of drivers tweeters.
*truth 3:* there are systems for non pro, non demanding, consumer average from cheap to high fi inside the same segment, some brands offer their own basic or better version too. for party, cinema, good quality or good fidelity.
when somebody accept this, then to choose the FLAC or WAV or the MP3 will be easier and funny.
when some people goes beyond the reality mixing the Pro trying to fit with the Brand and playing special kind of music with a personal purpose for others: it is the eternal discussion.
True. Hard drives are cheap. Yes, we can get a lot of digital real estate cheaply. But home (or office) storage is not the only point of concern. To play my music in my cars I either play from a thumbdrive or my phone connected. They greatest storage that can be practically used is measured in hundreds of gigabytes, not terabytes.
Trying to fit WAV on even my 512GB z fold 5 has been tough, especially considering how big 4K video is getting. Makes flac a wonderful option. I play back using poweramp and it sound brilliant.
Great video Paul. To uncompress a properly compressed flac to a wav format, what applications are suggested both pay and free?
There are so many, you can even just do it online on cloud converters
What do you audiofools not understand in L for lossless?
@@Harald_Reindl The L
@@Harald_Reindl no need to be nasty
@@brentshock3787 sorry, i can't stand this idiocy - you guys alltogehter including Paul are dumb as a piece of wood when it comes to digital audio
Can I convert my files from FLAC to wave, or would I have to rip the CDs again to get the proper wave files?
The 'L' in FLAC stands for lossless. So why would you need to rip the CD again?
@@ianhaylock7409 so you disagree with the content of the video?
@@Harjawaldar Based on what WAV to FLAC does, yes.
For years, I have noticed that wav sounds slightly more bassy than aiff when I compare the same song exports. Anyone else notice this?
Eh?@@nicksterj
Also, I want silent SSD so 8TB drives plus backup drives are not stupid cheap.
You'd think this would be a factor in the high end audio world, unless we're assuming we can all hermetically hide our servers in a specialized distribution closet somewhere.
@@nickmonks9563 you can have a NAS on a separate room... I have mine with the rest of IT gear (router, switch, cctv nvr, etc) on its own room
Hey Paul, always had love for your videos but sometimes I feel that your opinions are oozing with privilege. Bandwidth and storage are not universally cheap. This may make sense for audiophiles in the developed world, but for some of us in the developing world lossless audio compression formats are pivotal to making the hobby more accessible. Even across the US, broadband accessibility is not guaranteed. The fact of the matter is that the benefits of FLAC, ALAC and other similar formats make everything cheaper and more accessible at very little extra processing cost. Makes a hell of a lot of sense to me.
When you sell snakeoil aka Highend audio your definition of cheap differs to normal people with common sense :-)
What's the best format for iPod, I've got a 16 GB and an 80 GB?
the best format that ipod supports: WAV, ... AIFF.
if storage is the issue maybe the AAC or MP3 ....
I don't find usefull to have my iPod with all the songs and all my collection in the "best compressed format".
I can change and update the playlist easily,
to have all my playlists includes songs that I won't listen and fill my iPod, so just a few playlist in wav is enough for me.
@@georgemartinezza
For me it's about the sound quality , so I'll go with wav.
Thanks for the answer.👍
@@bendermi I copied it from the apple website, 'cause it caused me interest too
XD
Frecuencia de respuesta: 20 Hz a 20,000 Hz
Formatos de audio compatibles: AAC (8 a 320 Kbps), AAC protegida (del iTunes Store), HE-AAC, MP3 (8 a 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible (formatos 2, 3, 4, Audible Enhanced Audio, AAX y AAX+), Apple Lossless, *AIFF y WAV*
while Apple Lossless is the apple version of FLAC, but it is limited and I find it hard to rip manage or convert (I mean is not very easy while you drink coke).
🧐
@@georgemartinezza
Okay thanks a lot.👍😃
@@bendermi in "our" portable experience, I gossip: hard to find good headphones that I like. I don't like wireless, I like the 3.5mm and not easy to find even when I test models. I won't go for expensive and ultimate headphones, I've tested models average Sennheiser and are enough to me !
sad: my old ipod needs an external battery. maybe I will go for ipad, even so to listen and watch entertainment.
Thanks Paul for this insight on FLAC, does this also mean if you decode the FLAC first to a WAV file you can avoid this 'noise' ?
No. A bit stream coming from a FLAC has a set amount of data that represents the audio stream. Converting it to an equally lossless format does not add any additional audio data to that stream. Converting from one lossless file format to another lossless file form, by definition is lossless, translates the header that defines the file and how the bit the bit stream data is organized. A more visual example would be is to load a 2 mp cell file into Photoshop and then save it out with a much higher pixel count. I guarantee you that the photoshop version of that file is still going to look exactly like the original 2 mp but will consume massively more amounts of disk space.
No - it's decoded before it can be played internally anyways and common sense would tell you that
@@katherinejohnson701 the Photoshop example is idiotic because what you describe would be interpolation and that in fact has an impact - lossless compression don't change anything
@@katherinejohnson701 Unfortunately your Photoshop image is not a good example. If you attempt to save a lower resolution image at a higher resolution you will make the "higher resolution" version look worse than the original - it's called pixellation and is the reason why image libraries sell images at different resolutions for different purposes - ie 72dpi for web use, 300dpi for print quality.
I highly doubt they sound different. Placebo effect.
For all of you complaining about WAV not being able to contain embedded metadata, you need to check your facts again. I use Mp3tag to fully embed album art and other metadata into my wav files.
Flac is only a container, like a zip file or rar file. If you encode it back it will be 1:1 as the original
Doesn't matter what format, just use no compression or lossless compression - done, best quality.
Lowering the noise floor and taking care of jitter makes a HUGE difference. It's what makes my Aurender 😘💋
In the film postproduction industry a lot of us are migrating our sound libraries to FLAC simply because you get almost 2x the storage space out of your external hard drives without any impact to the original file.
And in the music industry, one of my DAWs (Reaper) can record FLAC natively. I ripped my CD collection to FLAC files. Outside of the synchronization capabilities a Broadcast WAV offers, WAV files need to start WAVing goodbye!
My man@@charlienyc1
because you can fit more files in your mobile library
I enjoy FLAC personally, perhaps my rig isnt up to snuff, but I really cannot hear any considerable difference compared to Raw CD/WAV audio. For those who do hear a difference thats so intolerable in comparison, I highly recommend playing with the few other lossless codecs out there be it Monkey Audio (.APE) or Apples incarnation (ALAC) .
You can't hear a difference which exists - do your word documents in a zip archive look different than outside? FLAC is exactly the same, just optimized for audio data
@@Harald_Reindl To split hairs, theres something like a less than 1% loss in flac, but yes your totally right!
Hey Paul, does WTF means what's the flac?
I usually prefer FLAC because of the metadata and the sound is CD quality like WAV is.
I burned both FLAC and WAV files to Audio CD and also played directly from the PC. And even my 12 year old PC has no issues with either formats at all. So a modern PC would not even break a sweat. Even a basic cheap smart TV etc plays FLAC pretty darn well without issues today. So in practice I really doubt it matters for the sound. But I also think that even if you don't always hear things a clearer path from source to speakers is always a benefit atleast for the equipment. To a degree though. But FLAC Vs. WAV is not one of those times it really matters.. And But it basicly takes the same amount of computer power to play them anyway so..
You use the term magnitude did you mean order of magnitude? That's 10 times better. Doesn't say much for the MK-1
1. Maybe I don’t want to use 1TB of drive in purely storing wav. I’m the type that has storage anxiety.
2. Computer noise that dramatically affects audio. Never even knew they affected audio
3. FLAC decompression barely puts a strain on modern cpu’s
4. Have you heard of perception bias
I use WAV exclusively.
I just can't believe that such simply task of unfolding the Flac file can add any relevant noise to the sound. Think about how many other harder processes is running when your device (anyone) is on, specially a PC.
Yes, we don't need to compress audio anymore. Storage is cheap.
Paul makes a good point about storage being cheap, and Internet download bandwidth is plentiful as well. I wager that in a blind properly administered test, nobody could consistently tell the difference between FLAC and WAV files, even on PS Audio's crazy awesome system, and that their guesses would statistically amount to a 50/50 coin toss at best.
I will also go so far as to bet that most of us audio plebes couldn't reliably discern between a 320 kbps MP3 from WAV or FLAC file, even on PS Audio's mega system. It would be great fun to run a truly impartial and fully blind WAV vs. 320 kpbs MP3 test with Paul in the hot seat, with online bets placed on whether or not he could reliably tell the difference. Toss in a truly blind and impartial A/B test on a comparatively inexpensive mid tier Schitt, Topping or similar DAC for less than a grand vs. the latest 8K dollar DirectStream DAC while we are at it to really make this interesting - LMAO...
My biggest objection to WAV is it doesn't natively support metadata, while FLAC does. Apparently there are ways to attach metadata to WAVs, but that requires using 3rd party programs and incurring brain damage, and I prefer stone cold easy and simply enjoying the music with as little BS as possible, so FLAC it is.
I think those with good hearing and if they have trained themselves to know what to hear for could tell which one sounds more real on such good systems. The leading edges of notes and the tonality is better, especially on percussive sounds like piano, the strike of strings on a guitar, or cymbals. But yes, most newbies probably can't reliably discern the difference in a blind test. Having that metadata in FLACs for discovery, sorting, rating, etc., is immeasurably important.
@@rosswarren436 stop talking nonsense - after decompress it's 100% identical because that's what the L for lossless means - how do you imagine that any golden ear or equipment could make a difference when the data ist bitwise identical?
@@Harald_Reindl I was comparing lossy 320Kbps mp3 (which Craig above mentioned) to FLAC (or wav) files. You are correct concerning FLAC and WAV being interchangeable given modern processing power. A FLAC is a WAV, just compressed in file size, but bit perfect when uncompressed.
@@rosswarren436 than state that when FLAC is the topic! 320 CBR is BTW pretty dumb - VBR in the highest quality setting is 16% smaller with identical or even better sound quality than 320
@@Harald_Reindl I was REPLYING to the comment by Craig. Thought that was in context. But yeah, VBR for mp3 is fine. It adjusts for the complexity of the waveforms on the fly and seems to be just about as good which is why sites like the ILMA (Internet Live Music Archive) use it for streaming and those wanting quickie downloads of show instead of snagging the much larger FLACs.
Flac was invented to solve storage issues when few years ago 1TB was very expensive that I couldn't afford. But of course now it has become cheap & affordable. It's not fair to say that flac is useless since now storage is cheap. Online streaming would still benefit from it even though Internet speed had improved a lot.
Although. I rip things uncompressed, AIFF or WAV, my music server would decompress before playing to the internal SSD that it actually plays from. I've experimented and hear no discernible difference into a 10K DAC. Oh, Paul, your new speakers intrigue me. I'm in Kansas City. I need to make my way out your way some time soon.
Apple does not charge for iCloud storage for purchased music you bought on Apple Music. All that is stored on Apple servers under your Apple Music account.
Movies you purchase in ITunes Music application are stored on Apple servers for free in iCloud but not downloaded. You have to stream them back from your iCloud account. Movies are DRM protected, you do not own the movies you bought.
Music you bought is DRM free. All your music downloads you bought are stored in the Apple Music folder on your computer. “MAKE SURE THAT MUSIC IS DOWNLOADED FIRST” you can choose the file formats “BEFORE” you download.
You can drag and drop that folder to an external hard drive.
I recommend people do this for albums that can and do go out of print on Apple Music. If you didn’t save it on an external drive, you will lose it along with your purchase. Be aware of that.
You can also drop and drag that file to another music application as well as on the external drive. It is your responsibility to backup your purchased Apple Music.
“Apple is not your babysitter” make Dam sure you know what you are doing and how to do it. Any screw ups on your part are on you.
Just decoded a 1min 35 second flac file to PCM in 0.196 seconds on my 2012 laptop. I can't see how that would cause some "noise" on the line. There is probably more work going on in the background moving your file from disk to the USB port than the decoding of the file. Even if you where concerned about that overhead at that speed you could load the whole track into RAM decode it in one go before it's played and not notice a sizable delay. In reality that is probably what is going on. The computer will load a chunk of FLAC file into RAM, decode that chunk, then send it on so for the vast majority of the the time there will be no decoding going on, the CPU will be asleep waiting for the data to be streamed to the output.
There maybe some argument about why bother in this day and age but it's not because it sounds better.
Why I use FLAC:
1. Decoding FLAC is trivial. IBM XT computers don't sweat doing it. It doesn't introduce comper-ish noise into the stream. The stream is bit for bit identical so where is the noise? Any hardware that has to "work" at decoding FLAC (if you can even find any) isn't worth having.
2. I have a large music collection (10KCDs + several hundred DVDs/BRs.) It's close to 3TB in size as FLAC files. Since it's mostly classical, it compresses very well. (I've had some disks that compress 84%...mono piano). Converting to WAV would increase the size to well over 7TB.
3. FLAC's meta-data/tagging schema is infinitely superior to that of WAV files. It's simple, easy to work with and universally supported.
So the real question is, why would you double+ the size of your music collection and use a poor/non-existent metadata/tagging system for the exact same quality of sound??
The majority of my files are in AIFF, since I use Mac, which is similar to WAV and allows some metadata’s. I did convert almost all files to AIFF, even the ones I downloaded as FLAC. Sometimes, FLAC is the only format available to stream/download so I listen to it that way. Keep in mind playing a pcm cd or sacd still sound better than the AIFF or WAV on a good transport/dac. It’s good to have all options and try them out.
and then... there is also ALAC! I chose this when ripping my CDs, have yet to compare with AIFF.
Great ❤ video.
I still listen to Mp3 files on my Limewire Intel Pentium 1ghz with Dial up. It's hard drive sounds like a little diesel truck😉 Reboot that baby. 😉
thats hilarious, thanks for the laugh, sir.
There are players that can decode whole file in RAM before playing, for example free Album Player.
When did unfolding FLAC taxing computers matter, in 1996? I'll take the advantage of rich metadata any day.
FLAC is just like a ZIP file, you get exactly the original content with not even 1 bit being different. People hearing the difference is just Placebo effect.
I agree that storage has become cheap but that only applies to PCs. Storing WAV files on a phone or tablet is a whole different thing.
Unfold? Sounds like MQA!
A terabyte would be around 700,000 of those old floppy disk we all used to use. Mind-boggling!
Paul I really appreciate your experienced points of view and effort making these videos. I watch them almost daily.
I have what I consider a pretty resolving system. I’m old so I don’t trust my ears but my daughter, who is a musician and her friends have very critical ears. They could not hear a difference when blind tested.
because there is none. why everybody that claims such big differences never provide instrumental measurements (which are perfectly doable with current technoogy) or simply does not try to make a blind test?
to be honest i think that is perfectly fine to believe in audiophile myths, spend a lot of money is esoteric stuff and so on, if this gives you more listening pleasure. but it would be nicer doing it with a properly connected brain :)
Musicians being good audiophiles is like mechanics being good drivers. There's just no reason to assume they are.
Storage wasn't always dirt cheap. I remember paying at least $200 for a 250 mb HDD when I was collecting mp3's. Storing at 320 KBPS was a big deal over standard mp3's and storing in FLAC was ridiculous. Not to mention trying to download these large files.
For that reason I rarely paid for a digital file and mostly spent my money on cd's and lp's. I'd rip my cd's to mp3 for portable use or to listen on my computer. I'd also make compilation cd's for the car.
I don't know why someone would pay a $1 a song on mp3 when you could buy the cd for the same or less and have a physical copy of it. I guess it's convenience or if you simply have money to burn. I would download mp3's to explore and then buy the hard copy of what I liked. That's what I do now with subscription services.
Now it looks like we can bypass files like FLAC and go completely lossless with digital files now that storage is cheap. I'm still not there with streaming as being my primary source. I'm still waiting for it to get a bit better.
similar tban I do.
I buy songs or some albums when I like them (if I like them).
I don"t pay for spotyf or amazon or any streaming: a waste to pay for thousands of songs I don't like, while less price I can buy the songs I like.
from my cassettes, cds, vinyl or PC or some purchased files, , I convert to WAV and I burn my personal CD collections. sometimes the mp3 version for play or storange for different purposes.
FLAC to me is useless while I can have WAV, and I don't notice the difference when I play the mp3 version, yes you got to pay attention to hear some difference but it is for listening and sing or dance, not for analyze.
Storage still isn't cheap - I recently spent 2000 euro for 4 x 4 TB SSD - you need the space multiple times (raid, backup locations)
@@georgemartinezza when you waste space with wav you are simply an idiot - case closed
@@Harald_Reindl why do you consider my music is a waste of space?
should I save my files as you want or as I want?
will you impose how many files in AAC, MP3 and WAV should I have?
have you heard the difference between some MP3 versions and WAV version of the same song I have?
*if I save some songs in WAV format, why or what for do you imagine I do that?*
2000 EUR in storage? a very bad and wrong setup, you should learn more about RAID or Shared storage. with 350 EUR you could save the entire and complete albums collection of 140 artists in WAV format. *do you have all that?*
I understand the why your frustration and angry after know you made the wrong setup.
just reply, if you are enough serious and mature:
why do you consider my music is a waste of space?
*if I save some songs in WAV format, why or what for do you imagine I do that?*
just I beg for you answer that, no more.
I bet you won't reply as a real person.
@@georgemartinezza the audio signal of WAV and FLAC is identical - wasting storage space is idiotic and if it's only the benefit of improved wear levelling on the SSD device
I store all my digital media on uncompressed ticker tape reels and punchcards for that "papery" feel in the audio. But seriously... anyone that A - B's flac vs wav and notices a difference is just undermining everything they have said about music and proving that they are full of it.
Good point that HDD/SSD are very cheap nowadays. FLAC encoding @ home isn't really needed anymore, if not needing the tags.
The question is, can all your music players, TVs and stuff play bare WAV files?
For the same reason I think HEVC encodings take more effort and energy than AVC encodings and the power/energy invested isn't justified in my opinion.
If not HEVC is your main source ofc. But HEVC also has a lower quality as AVC.
You could even say the time wasted in using a different codec isn't worth it (anymore since TBs of HDD/SSD space is cheap).
For servers, the whole internet traffic and streaming services ofc. it's a difference using billions of files each hour.
That's why AAC/M4A/MP4 lossy is being used. CZcams is one good example.
In the Corona lockdown Netflix chose to stop 4K streaming, because the bandwith of the internet was too weak.
The hint about tags also may be important to some people and players.
Do any player support cue or m3u files? If so, I'll be fine with adding one big list per album and keep WAV.
The time you need to encode stuff is worth more than a bigger HDD/SSD. It's not that the PC is slow, but your time invested to set up things.
At home I'd use WAV or maybe FLAC, if Traktor DJ studio can't read the metadata of WAV/CUE/M3U(8).
But I already had headaches making my own CUE/M3U files, if the album is one big file. You could need some helper apps for it.
Using Traktor or Djay is another use case we have with digital music files, not just hearing Hi-Fi albums.
Using WAV at least saves time there to load/analyze tracks. It's some seconds saved per track.
Electromagnetic noise is an interesting factor. But if you start this topic, it's gonna be complicated, a science in itself, EMC (electromagnetic compatibility) is a real factor nowadays to not disturb other machines wirelessly.
That's why you shield, use net filters and galvanically separate.
Manufacturers made "clock spread spectrum" to widen the frequencies of CPUs to lower the amplitude of noise. That's what I saw in PC BIOS like 2 decades ago.
I didn't understand back then, but now I do.
In fact they added virtually more noise in new CPUs this way, but with much lower amplitude to lower the impact.
To limit the impact, in theory you'd also need to disable "normal" frequency hopping / throttling in CPUs like power savings aka c/p/halt states, which will send out some spikes, which may disturb some other chips in the signal processing.
But also disable multi core CPUs and let only one process run on one dedicated CPU. This will reduce potential micro-stutterings, crackling, latency, jitter at least.
Sharing one process like decoding a WAV/FLAC/MP3 or whatever file between multiple CPU cores adds IRQ times and this adds latency, cracklings and so on.
But you can't simply control any part, because you have to use CPUs or dedicated standalone devices which exists on the market, not create your own CPUs, lol.
But those are getting more and more integrated, multi-functional, so they went multi-core and that creates more noise at all, compared to old 1 core CPUs w/o energy saving capabilities. But as said, the old ones didn't use clock spread spectrum, created a high amplitude noise at some frequency, which may disturb one machine.
Like DECT phones or Satellite dish receivers disturb themselves on one HF frequency, interrupting the stream in the worst case.
You could try to use a CPU with realtime kernel and run the CPU at let's say fixed 3 GHz, but you can't control processes being switched to different CPU cores nor disable boost frequencies, which die CPU does by itself. So there's always some noise even in idle mode.
Ofc. you can measure the HF noise which chips transmit, that's how people cracked 4096 bit encryption by scanning for MOSFET signals or intercepted CRT signals wirelessly decades ago.
The best thing is to discard any not needed electronical devices from your music room.
Disable WLAN, Bluetooth, phones, unneeded PCs.
Remember the phone interference with speakers? That's different, but also impacts the sound ofc.
if decompression not happen within the DAC, it should be irreverent, I believe most HIFI DAC can/should isolate the input digital signal noise well.
Seriously doubting this, but either way, I dont think offering WAV instead of FLAC is a big issue, since you can just easily encode a WAV file to FLAC with Freac (I think it was called that, short for exact audio copy?) and it shouldn't take more than a minute. Slight extra work for the user/customer, but it's also pretty trivial. The encoding shouldn't be as intensive as some of those lossy encodings, so it should be faster as well to encode to FLAC.
Also, I use FLAC to archive the music, and to occasionally listen to it in the living room with speakers. For more critical listening, I just pop in a CD, as 99% of my rips are from my own CDs.
For some quick sessions or background noise when I do stuff, I check my FLAC folder.
I always thought flac was flat and boring. Problem was somewhere else. I'm a flac convert now.
What if I download some FLAC files and then convert them to WAV, then secretly copy them in WAV format to another PC but pretend they were always WAV, will my other PC know I was lying to it and make the files sound worse? Maybe I should "burn-in" all my FLAC files and use Audioquest ethernet cables to download them from my router and then that would make them sound all "natural" again.
Does he have any evidence for the claim that "unfolding" a FLAC file takes any meaningful processor overhead? Is there anything he can point to that compares how much "horsepower" is being used in opening either file or is he just totally making that up.
Is he just assuming that since it takes some extra processing to convert FLAC to WAV, it therefore must somehow change the sound quality?
This is why it's often unhelpful to use gut feelings or subjective intuitions to make objective scientific claims. Unless you need to make some snake oil to sell more products.
More from this site:
"You already know that FLAC has limits on its sampling rates and bit-depth, whereas WAV has no such restrictions. What does this mean in the context of the quality of your audio files?
WAV is uncompressed and so retains everything regarding sample rates and bit-depth. That’s also why it takes up more space than a FLAC file. Is WAV better than FLAC for this reason? Not necessarily. While FLAC will lose specific details throughout the compression process, it is still lossless. There is no substantial quality loss in FLAC files."
The key word here is "Substantial".
While you could convert your compressed FLAC or ALAC local library to uncompressed WAV or AIFF files, you can’t change what streaming providers like TIDAL and Qobuz send you (hint: they use FLAC). It’s better to have a solution that handles the inevitable lossless compression in your system without compromises. Today, such conversion is trivial for even the lowest of processors. This is a non-issue. FLAC is after all the Free LOSSLESS Audio Code.
Yes you can buy cheap storage but Internet bandwidth is not "cheap" yet, so all streaming services that I know of (other that stupid LOSSY Spotify) stream audio in FLAC, so you might as well have a system in place that can do that conversion well and feed it to your DAC.
The problem with WAV is that metadata is limited, an example: Cant deal with a simple cover art. So in my opinion AIFF is GOAT.
He's right about the computer noise. Listening to flac files if I turn up the volume and place my ear by the tweeter I can totally hear AOL trying to dial up.
Advantages of using FLAC:
1. FLAC is smaller than WAV.
2. FLAC can be tagged with metadata better than WAV.
3. The sound of FLAC is identical to the sound of WAV.
4. Decoding a FLAC is nothing for today's PCs.
We're no longer in the 1980's!
Digital audio is mathematical. The information code is the same in FLAC as it is in WAV, it's just archived to reduce its size to about 66%.
Interesting, coming from a mp3 point it makes not much sense, however coming from a pure source with no compression place, yes, simpler is usually better.
At one point I was using Pi-MusicBox streamer/network player, an update had it not liking wav files, so I started flac-ing stuff, so kind of forced over. Then I discovered Volumio, now flac has kind of left my radar.
As a provider, I would have thought you would embrace flac, but then advise customers to convert it (as per this vid). Less strain on your webservers and links etc. 50% load for the same sales, more room for more customers at zero cost.
Use optical 192khz 24 bits to digital transmit signal, it won't leak any noise from your source device 😆
My Windows ASIO music player, Black Omega wont play Wav files unfortunately.
@Douglas Blake Does it work in 24bit ASIO mode though?
@Douglas Blake Thanks - I'll give it a try.
Hey Paul, you probably already know this, but be careful about what drives you buy. 1TB for $50 is a bit cheap and likely makes performance compromises. Typically, they are fast enough until their small buffers are overrun, at which point they perform pretty bad. Good performance 1TB drive is about $80+. (Not considering USB drives. That interface is slow enough that buffers don't over load.) You overall point still stands, of course. Even $80 for 1TB of music storage is a bargain.
And here I am involuntarily converting my 24/192 wav vinyl rips into FLAC because WAV still doesn't quite support ID3 right, which confuses the living daylights out of the media server software on my NAS. I hate it, but right now track orders are completely random, no matter what I do.
If anyone has a better idea, yell!
So. I just actually (for the first time!) tried to prove the theory by turning some of my WAV files into FLAC. Yeah, it's not an option. If you think this is not a thing, you haven't even TRIED listening. There's absolutely no way I'll settle for this. I'm shocked!
There's more; Just compared level 5 flac compression to level 1, level 1 is an incredible about better. Stereo imaging is back and so is the attack. Yet, the original WAV file the FLAC is created from dissolves way better in the upper frequencies. The FLAC file hasn't lost anything, but the sound has. There's still unfortunately no way I'll settle for FLAC.
And since we're late night experimenting anyway; The difference with 24/192 files is just as big as with 44.1/16 files. Surprisingly!
I have a playback with a built-in hard drive. It isn't easy to change, so FLAC is important. And the result is the same.
A key claim made in this video is FLAC files sound inferior to WAV files because the preparation sequence used to get a FLAC file ready to stream introduces noise in the audio stream sounds like tinnitus. My understanding is processing a FLAC file occurs in total before the is transmitted to the DAC, a process that applies equally to a WAV, FLAC, ALAC, AIFF and so on. There might be an extremely remote chance in the brief amount of time it takes to load a file into RAM could influence the sound but claiming that this noticeably degrades the sound is an extremely high bar to get over. I challenge the presenter to perform a double blind A/B test between formats to test this premise and then get back to us with the results. I am going to go out on a limb here and saw it off: There will be zero detectable difference by a listener under these conditions. Plus FLAC's robust ability to add metadata and at the same time consume less disk space is a huge win over WAV files. If you prefer WAV files, knock yourself out, they sound just fine - that choice comes down to personal preference and I have no opinion about that choice.
Yeah, I'd like to see a scientific study on this conjecture myself.
Linux has numerous free open source cross platform media software available. There are over 40,000 free open source cross platform software programs. You have to use patience finding what you can use for your particular needs.
I am more than well aware what a pain in the ass large media files that are unorganized can be. That is the main reason for metadata software to help with organizing files. You have to be connected to the internet while organizing your library using media software.
If an album cover cannot be found, you can create your own album cover in numerous ways. Either drag and drop or copy and paste.
I can hear no difference between cd and flac on my system, raspberry pi running Volumio vs denon cd player, I can hear a noticeable degradation in mp3 and steaming vs cd
WAV vs AIFF????
I respectfully disagree!
Processing power is not an issue and it buffers ahead. A hundred dollar phone can decode flac effortlessly these days. If you have thousands and thousands of albums space is still a concern. Let's not even talk about how large uncompressed PCM surround sound audio can be. Metadata is a huge factor too...if you want metadata on completely uncompressed audio you need to use AIFF not wav if you aren't using flac or similar lossless compression formats.
But one thing we can all agree with is that mp3 and other lossy formats should be a thing of the past!
Streaming Services have to use FLAC or another way to store in compressed form. Imagine the tons of storage required for TIDAL, QOBUZZ, etc carry millions on titles and available for download immediately and timely. For portability, there is zero argument for WAV. Are you kidding?
the guy converted Mp3s from a compact disk to WAV. In what way would that sound any different? Mp3 is compressed. Converting it to WAV doesn't uncompress it. The details that were lost are totally destroyed. You can't get it back.
I remember when mp3 was starting to become mainstream and it killed audio quality so much! Going from a crisp CD to people listening to horrible 96 or 128kbps mp3 files was the equivalent of taking a Diamond and overlapping diarrhea over it.
I’m so glad people finally noticed that and are now downloading songs in much higher quality. But yes, it was 5 years of torture hearing people in their cars listening to such crappy mp3 files.
Now we have people with music screaming out of useless miniature speakers on mobiles phones - the world is getting worse.
Then you go to a once large HiFi provider and only find Bluetooth junk, yes getting worse.
mp3 file = ~9,000kb - same data rendered as flac = ~ 45,000kb - yes, not that much of a diffi in (perceived) sound quality, but in storage.
mp3 fools our ears, flac needn't.
FLAC is designed for portable hi-res players where 1tb of storage would be impossible, in any case the soundcards are now responsible for decompression now they have their own built in audio processors