[bmichels]

I am rebuilding my music library, i have a Cayin N30LE AMBER DAP, and I wonder what will be the best file format for best sound quality for my Cayin DAP: FLAC ? ALAC ? AIFF ? or... WAV ?

 

[G8torbyte]

I built a digital library from my CD collection on a network attached storage system mainly using FLAC since it compresses the digital files and still maintains lossless format. The open source developers keep it updated here if you decide to do compression on original files: https://xiph.org/flac/index.html

ALAC (Apple proprietary encoding) is probably very similar but I don't use Apple Music. AIFF and WAV are uncompressed Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) original files and will take up a lot more bytes on your storage.

 

[bmichels]

Thanks, but IF storage space is not an issue, then what sound best: FLAC or AIFF ?

 

[sygnus21]

In keeping things simple...

All four formats are lossless (meaning sound quality lost from compression). AIFF and ALAC are apple so if you run apple products use one of those.

FLAC and WAV are lossless formats, but the main difference is FLAC can be compressed and WAV is not. That matters for storage space.

As for sound quality between them truthfully, you'll be hard pressed to hear any differences between them and thus a debate that rages on as all a matter of opinion. For total compatibly (outside of Apple products?) and convenience FLAC is the most versatile and prevalent format.

I've ripped my entire CD collection (2700+) in FLAC, and when I buy files online, I opt for FLAC. If running a MAC or Apple product, look AIFF or ALAC.

This is the simple explanation as the deep dive explanation can be highly debatable and subjective. But if you want that, start by reading this...

What's the Real Difference Between .wav, .aiff, .mp3, and .m4a?

 

[CAJames]

Try them yourself and see if you can tell the difference between compressed and uncompressed. For me I like FLAC with Foobar2000 but YMMV.

 

[coburn]

I did a lot of A/B listening to various formats 10 years ago using a CAP computer as a source. I did not hear any difference between lossless formats but I did hear a distinct difference between compressed and uncompressed FLAC. Now I have all of my files in uncompressed FLAC.

 

[bmichels]

I did a lot of A/B listening to various formats 10 years ago using a CAP computer as a source. I did not hear any difference between lossless formats but I did hear a distinct difference between compressed and uncompressed FLAC. Now I have all of my files in uncompressed FLAC.

Thanks. I guess "uncompressed FLAC" is... AIFF or WAV ?

 

[CAJames]

I did a lot of A/B listening to various formats 10 years ago using a CAP computer as a source. I did not hear any difference between lossless formats but I did hear a distinct difference between compressed and uncompressed FLAC. Now I have all of my files in uncompressed FLAC.

I have a friend in whose ears I trust who says he hears a difference between compressed and uncompressed on his Mac based system, and uncompressed is clearly better. For me, I did comparisons between (compressed) FLAC (uncompressed) WAV and the original CD from which I ripped the files. Using Foobar on a tweaked Windows laptop I couldn't hear a difference between FLAC and WAV, but the there was clearly a difference between playing the files or playing the CD. For me, on my system digital cables make a much bigger difference than file format, but that is very much FWIW, YMMV and all that.

 

[CAJames]

Thanks. I guess "uncompressed FLAC" is... AIFF or WAV ?

The FLAC standard allows different compression levels. In theory you can create a FLAC file with (essentially) no compression. Note however that the raw CD format is highly space inefficient so you can create a smaller file without actually encoding (compressing) the data.

 

[InvisibleInk]

MP3 Insane VBR

 

[mrjayviper]

ALAC has been open-sourced for quite awhile now

 

[HIPlayerDSD]

ALAC has been open-sourced for quite awhile now

 

[HIPlayerDSD]

wav is the best format, followed by flac;

 

[VNandor]

AIFF and WAV both encode the audio as PCM. The difference between them is how they encode metadata. FLAC (and ALAC) compresses and encodes data without any loss. Once they are decoded to PCM, the resulting PCM is going to be the same as the one contained in WAV (or AIFF). This can be verified by a "null test", by creating a FLAC file from the WAV, decoding the FLAC to get the PCM data, and comparing the stored sample points to the one contained in the WAV by subtracting them from each other. The result is going to be 0 if both PCM data coming from the WAV and FLAC are the same.

 

[m-i-c-k-e-y]

On my ears WAV is better (more nuanced) than FLAC.

Here is a comparison from Sound Liaison's Format Comparison v2.0 (free download). From the album Sing The Blues by Carmen Gomez, 'A Fool for You' in DXD.

WAV 352 - 24

FLAC 352 - 24

Download it (or the whole album from Sound Liaison) and test it yourselves. If no difference then fine. If there's a difference, then fine too. Anyway its YOU will be listening not THEM (well most of the time).