If this is the wrong sub, I apologize, but the knowledge in here is off the charts.

I have hundreds of CDs I’ve collected through the years, and have ripped them to MP3 to play on my phone.

But, I started worrying when I went to replace a CD for one that had just lost its quality, I found out that it wasn’t issued anymore, and would be almost impossible to replace it.

So, now I’m wanting to rip my CDs so that they’re exact copies. I plan on burning my favorite ones to play in my car/home audio system.

I use WMP, and I just wanted to know which format is best, WAV or FLAC, to store them. I plan on using Anyburn to use to convert back to CD audio.

Any opinions?

Thanks!

  • skycake10@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    FLAC and WAV are effectively the same thing as far as audio quality goes. FLAC has the advantages of compression and better tagging support, so there’s zero reason to use WAV.

    It’s true that most people won’t be able to tell the difference between something like 320 kbps MP3 and FLAC, but for archival storage there’s little reason to use anything but FLAC. I also have a bunch of those FLAC files transcoded down to VBR MP3 to put on my phone.

    • Nerdy1980s@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      Considering that FLAC is effectively a 1:1 transfer of CD music, I always felt that WAV was file format that never needed to exist.

      I vaguely recall that .wav files were used for ringtones and years earlier, used with super short animations that had sound and I think, but not sure, Microsoft used (maybe still uses?) .wav files for system sounds with Windows 3.x

      I never recalled .wav files ever being widely used/accepted as a major file format for larger files like songs.

      I think the *early days of sharing music as .mp3 killed any chance of WAV files having more acceptance.

      *before the DMCA https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act