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Comment by bretbernhoft | Hacker News Reader

I've only ever used .WAV and .MP3 formats. What would a .FLAC file format be used for?

Lossless compression to around 60% of WAV size. Also more widespread support for tags than with WAV. So even if you don’t particularly care about the space savings, converting to FLAC could still be beneficial.

50% at the highest setting.

Depends on the audio content, not all genres are equally compressible. The average tends to be above 50%.

WAV is uncompressed. MP3 is highly compressed, but lossy. FLAC is compressed and lossless. If you wanted to store lots of master copies of audio, you could use WAV or you could reduce storage space by using FLAC instead.

But you cant (up)convert WAV to FLAC? right? so if your source is WAV or MP3, FLAC is irrelevant?

What? Most all FLAC is created (converted) from a WAV source. If your source is MP3, then yes, FLAC is irrelevant... But FLAC is basically a lossless compression format for WAV.

I'm really confused by what you're talking about lol... especially "up"convert...??? WAV is the ultimate lossless audio on PC. It really doesn't get any better than WAV. There is no "up" from WAV. FLAC is a compression format for WAV, that does not lose any data. The output of FLAC will be identical to the WAV file, even though its compressed. MP3 is a compression format for WAV that loses data, and will not be identical to the original WAV file.

WAV this and WAV that.

In 1988, Apple developed the Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF), which is uncompressed pulse code modulation (PCM). PCM is what is stored on CDs, so any Mac with a CD-ROM drive attached will recognize the PCM information on Red Book audio CD's as AIFF files.

Inexplicably, 3 years later, Microsoft and IBM developed the Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF) in 1991, of which the WAV format is one implementation. RIFF doesn't store PCM. Instead it stores various formats of data in 4 byte "chunks."

Depending on the audio file format specified, one can always distinguish a Windows user from an audio professional (or a Mac user), because since about 1990, the vast majority of professional audio recording (tracking, mixing and mastering) studios have been exclusively Mac shops, including such greats as Skywalker Sound and Abbey Road Studios.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchange_File_Format

All these formats, IFF, AIFF, and RIFF, use named chunks for organization, and store PCM basically the same way, though there are other payloads possible.

My post was BS. The reason Macs became ubiquitous in audio had nothing to do with file formats and likely had everything to do with pro audio software and hardware developers that initially ignored Windows and PCs, and by the time these became platform independent, Mac was too ingrained to be dislodged. But AIFF does have smooth and sexy contours compared to WAV's clunky aesthetic. There I go again.

PSA: If you want to recreate the original file (WAV, AIFF, etc), including metadata, you should use the --keep-foreign-metadata switch to flac, otherwise it only preserves what’s needed for the audio.

https://xiph.org/flac/documentation_tools_flac.html#flac_opt...

Thank you, i didnt know

WAV is the original lossless audio file. FLAC is just a compressed version of that file (think of it as .zip).

MP3 is more like an edited version of the original where "extra fluff" is removed from the audio in a way that you can still hear the important bits. And then compressed for further space savings.

Obviously, there is no point in converting MP3 to FLAC since when the original lossless audio track was MP3'd , it lost some of the audio information, so you'd only be changing the compression algorithm, I imagine.

Thank you

In addition to what others have said (FLAC is lossless but compressed, and about 50% smaller than WAV), FLAC (plus a few other tiny files) is also the de facto format for archiving audio CDs (it can do other quality than CD quality, but it's mostly used to backup CDs).

When you rip one of your CD, a good ripper shall verify that your rip is 100% bit perfect (by verifying that the hash of your rip matches an online database of hashes of CDs ripped by other people). These rippers typically do rip to FLAC.

FWIW on Linux I've had good luck with "whipper" in the past (haven't ripped any CD that recently) [1]

[1] https://github.com/whipper-team/whipper

It’s like a zip, but for audio. Uncompresses to the exact original.

Being able to convert back to a 1:1 format of the original source.

https://www.lalal.ai/blog/difference-between-audio-formats-m...

wav but smaller

Lossless compression of PCM audio

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