Flac

[BWLover]

Hey people. What's the best program for decompressing flac to WAV or PCM? What's the best format to choose to decompress to?


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[mjb]

Whats wrong with FLAC?

[aud19]

Whats wrong with FLAC?

I second this. Why convert it at all?

[PewterTA]

There's a lot of talk about .wavs sounding better than lossless formats like FLAC.

I personally have never found this to be the case....but maybe it's because I just don't hear it or don't have things set up completely properly TO hear the difference...

[mjb]

There's a lot of talk about .wavs sounding better than lossless formats like FLAC.

I that were true, that WAV sounds better than lossless, then converting an already converted FLAC file to WAV would probably not see those benefits.

[technodanvan]

I that were true, that WAV sounds better than lossless, then converting an already converted FLAC file to WAV would probably not see those benefits.

Concur.

I think EAC can rip straight to WAV, though I've never done it.

[JonMarsh]

Max can convert between the various Lossless formats. FLAC doesn't lose data anymore than a ZIP file of an exec or PDF loses data- once it's extracted, checksums will be identical.

Different players and OS's and hardware may give different results playing the two back, because FLAC requires more work at playback. OTOH, the ideal player will be decoding the full track to memory (RAM) and playing back the PCM from RAM, in which case it should make NO difference whether the source file is WAV or FLAC or AIFF or ALAC. I don't like WAV because it doesn't support any embedded meta data, which makes it a PITA for computer based audio playback or for a dedicated hardware server like an NAD M50 or Aurender S10 or W20. So info like track name, composer, player, album art, all has to be in separate files.

AIFF is closes to WAV but with embedded data- so for systems that don't do well with FLAC or ALAC, AIFF is probably the best choice.

OTOH, my NAD M50 encodes CD RIPS to FLAC, and the playback is very, VERY nice.

[madmac]

Max can convert between the various Lossless formats. FLAC doesn't lose data anymore than a ZIP file of an exec or PDF loses data- once it's extracted, checksums will be identical.

Different players and OS's and hardware may give different results playing the two back, because FLAC requires more work at playback. OTOH, the ideal player will be decoding the full track to memory (RAM) and playing back the PCM from RAM, in which case it should make NO difference whether the source file is WAV or FLAC or AIFF or ALAC. I don't like WAV because it doesn't support any embedded meta data, which makes it a PITA for computer based audio playback or for a dedicated hardware server like an NAD M50 or Aurender S10 or W20. So info like track name, composer, player, album art, all has to be in separate files.

AIFF is closes to WAV but with embedded data- so for systems that don't do well with FLAC or ALAC, AIFF is probably the best choice.

OTOH, my NAD M50 encodes CD RIPS to FLAC, and the playback is very, VERY nice.

Huh????.......who's on second base???

[PewterTA]

I concur with Jon... in my setup I've never found either .wav or .flac sounding much different (if at all). Then again, maybe my system isn't good enough to differentiate...or maybe it's the opposite, my system is so good it can take any limitations there might be and circumvent them.... ha ha

I think it's more just nit-picking on the different formats and in some cases some people's DACs may do better with incoming .wav files than they do with .flac. I think that's all there really is to it. But you know how much people love to argue about 1s and 0s.

[impala454]

They're bitwise identical as far as what ends up at your computer's output. So long as your computer is newer than 1996 or so it shouldn't be different at all. The only thing that could possibly cause a difference in sound is something hitting your CPU, or some drivers not being set up properly (i.e. causing the FLAC library to use a different driver than whichever one your WAV player is).

[jim1961]

Programs like Izotope RxII dont do flac, so conversion is necessary sometimes.

[Hdale85]

Which is where DBPowerAmp shines in it's ripping and converting performance

[bigburner]

Hey people. What's the best program for decompressing flac to WAV or PCM? What's the best format to choose to decompress to?

I use a program called CUETools to convert files from FLAC to WAV but I'm sure there are dozens of other programs that do an equally good job because you are only "unzipping" the file after all. As long as all the ones and zeros are there and in the right sequence it shouldn't matter.

I agree with Jon that WAV is less than ideal because it doesn't support embedded metadata. However once you've put your first 1000 hours into iTunes (or whatever else you use that doesn't support FLAC) it's hard to switch to an alternative.

Nigel.