[domsch1988]

I just started purchasing some Albums on Bandcamp. I downloaded FLAC and WAV for testing.
WAV comes out to (foobar) 1400kbps, Flac "only" 1000kbps. I'm not really sure if there is a difference there since flac is supposed to be lossless.
The main question is, since WAV doesn't support tagging, do i give up some soundquality with FLAC here?

 

[MindsMirror]

They are the same quality. The FLAC files contain identical audio information to the wav since it is lossless. Bit rate doesn't affect quality of lossless audio, FLAC will use as many bits as necessary in order to store a perfect copy. In this case it needed 1000Kbps to store all the information. Wav has a higher bit rate because it uses a less efficient way of storing the information. Bit rate affects lossly audio quality because lossy codecs are given a bit budget too small to store all the information, so some information has to be discarded.

 

[Music Alchemist]

When downloading from Bandcamp, you should go with FLAC since it has the tags, while WAV does not. However, WAV does support tags. Use a program like dBpoweramp and you can edit all the tags and artwork, and when you convert a file from one format to WAV, it retains all the metadata. Of course, there's no practical reason to use WAV since any other lossless format sounds the same and takes up less space...but I do anyway since hard drive space is not an issue, the idea of uncompressed files is appealing to me, and "wave" sounds cool.

 

[domsch1988]

When downloading from Bandcamp, you should go with FLAC since it has the tags, while WAV does not. However, WAV does support tags. Use a program like dBpoweramp and you can edit all the tags and artwork, and when you convert a file from one format to WAV, it retains all the metadata. Of course, there's no practical reason to use WAV since any other lossless format sounds the same and takes up less space...but I do anyway since hard drive space is not an issue, the idea of uncompressed files is appealing to me, and "wave" sounds cool.

Yeah, realized that too.
I just kept Joey Landreth's whisky as Wav because it's awesome I'm generally using MediaMonkey for Tagging. Had no Problem with the Wav files.

 

[Swiftfalcon]

I buy wav files in highest available resolution from hdtracks since they cost same as flacs and I only care about audio quality.

 

[Music Alchemist]

I buy wav files in highest available resolution from hdtracks since they cost same as flacs and I only care about audio quality.

You may or may not be aware of the following:

Many digital music stores are dishonest and misleading to customers. Sometimes they sell different masters of the recording for different file resolutions (or, more often, just a different master than some other stores for all the versions they sell) to make it seem like hi-res files have an audible benefit, when they really don't. On rare occasions they can even sell a different recording altogether! And all without disclosing these facts. (At least most of the time.)

Red Book (the 16-bit / 44.1 kHz PCM standard used for CDs) is as good as it gets as far as human ears can hear.

WAV and FLAC are both lossless and contain the same data. When FLAC files are played, the data is uncompressed and the bit stream is identical to WAV.

If you only care about audio quality, seek out the best versions of albums available based on the quality of the recording and mastering (rather than irrelevant file size) and don't be fooled by marketing.

https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/24bit-vs-16bit-the-myth-exploded.415361
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/why...s-not-only-worthless-but-bad-for-music.716822
https://www.head-fi.org/articles/li...ac-alac-aiff-dsd-dxd-etc-download-sites.16314

 

[Dulalala]

They are the same quality. The FLAC files contain identical audio information to the wav since it is lossless. Bit rate doesn't affect quality of lossless audio, FLAC will use as many bits as necessary in order to store a perfect copy. In this case it needed 1000Kbps to store all the information. Wav has a higher bit rate because it uses a less efficient way of storing the information. Bit rate affects lossly audio quality because lossy codecs are given a bit budget too small to store all the information, so some information has to be discarded.

WAV and FLAC are both lossless and contain the same data. When FLAC files are played, the data is uncompressed and the bit stream is identical to WAV.

To elaborate on this a bit, FLAC is what's called a lossless compression, WAV is not a lossless compression. WAV has no compression done on it. To make it simple, think of FLAC as a ZIP file, it can pack and unpack the file and still retain all the data.

 

[Music Alchemist]

To elaborate on this a bit, FLAC is what's called a lossless compression, WAV is not a lossless compression. WAV has no compression done on it. To make it simple, think of FLAC as a ZIP file, it can pack and unpack the file and still retain all the data.

Yep. Some people make a distinction between lossless and uncompressed, saying that uncompressed is technically not lossless even though there's no loss of data...but since the data is the same, I just refer to them all as lossless. (Compressed lossless and uncompressed lossless.)