There is actually a corner on the web where people debate about FLACs and WAVs s...

lucideer · on April 23, 2017

This is probably true in non-blind listening comparison though. Similar to food tasting different when served in different coloured receptacles[0]

[0] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1745-459X.2012....

mikeash · on April 23, 2017

If you had to summarize the audiophile community in a few words, it would be "does not understand the point of blind testing."

venture_lol · on April 23, 2017

All audophiles eventually will reach the stage where my hearing aid is better than yours :)

mikeass · on April 25, 2017

[flagged]

sctb · on April 26, 2017

We've banned this account and the main one for repeatedly violating the guidelines and creating new accounts to do so.

nayuki · on April 24, 2017

For example: http://forums.naimaudio.com/topic/flac-vs-wav-audio-quality

user5994461 · on April 23, 2017

That's fun considering they are bit-to-bit identical :D

edejong · on April 23, 2017

Yes, you got the pun, bravo, 2 geek-points for you.

However, you lose 20 geek-points because FLAC and wav are not bit-to-bit identical. They are both lossless encodings and correct implementations will preserve the input material bit-to-bit.

bcook · on April 23, 2017

Perhaps he's referring the the bits sent out from the codec rather than the bits received by the codec?

user5994461 · on April 23, 2017

FLAC is bit to bit identical to WAV after decoding.

In layman terms, it's like zipping and unzipping a .wav

edejong · on April 23, 2017

Yes, I understand how the FLAC codec works. My comment was pointing out that FLAC can either represent the codec or the binary and that in neither case one can say that FLAC is bit-to-bit identical, since in the former case you're referring to the specification and in the latter case you are referring to the binary executable.

One can say that FLAC is a lossless compression codec and as such it is homomorphic to the original raw binary encoding and the WAV encoding.

It might be pedantic, but saying "flac is bit-to-bit identical to wav" is just wrong. To me it sounds like saying: "The speed limit is 80 kilometers".