Wav Vs Vinyl Vs Flac

A wav file is significantly larger than an equivalent file in flac format since the former one isn t compressed.

Wav vs vinyl vs flac. A lossless file the flac free lossless audio codec is compressed to nearly half the size of an uncompressed wav or aiff of equivalent sample rate but there should be no loss in terms of how it sounds. Vinyl can still push music to the limits of its dynamic range 55 70db but it often shies away from doing so in order to maintain sound quality. This means you can store more music on a hard drive. Everyone loves a flac.

See our youtube debate. Wav files are uncompressed which is great for audio editing. To make it clear sometimes a wav file is longer than flac because wav cannot recognize the period of salience while flac can. That s why snare drums cymbal splashes and other loud instruments have so much more punch in vinyl recordings.

I do admit vinyl is fun and nostalgic with the crackles imperfect grooves and the feeling you get when you put the needle on the record. In short vinyl is fun but flac is more consistent. The main difference between these two formats is compression. Vinyl is a bit inconsistent.

Wav and other uncompressed formats are excellent for working on so are used in editing tools but flac uses lossless compression meaning by definition there is no difference in the sound when it is played back and is simply stored in a more efficient manner. Flac files are compressed so they take less space than wav and are better suited for storing music. But sometimes the vinyl version will have better dynamic range. Flac is lossless pcm format that allow to compress and unpack digital audio in original quality without losses.

But with a flac you will get the same thing no matter what. It is same to wav ape aiff etc. However wav files also take a lot of space. The results may surprise you as they did us.

Vinyl may be captured and stored in any aforementioned lossless file type without capturing losses. Check out our listening results. Alac vs flac vs wma lossless. We compare the sound quality of analog vinyl vs digital audio cd flac on a 100k stereo setup.