Library & files
FLAC vs WAV
FLAC and WAV hold identical audio. FLAC compresses it losslessly to roughly 60% the size and carries tags cleanly; WAV stores it raw, is universally readable, and handles metadata badly.
In practice
Identical audio, so decide on tags and space: FLAC for the library, WAV only where something refuses to read FLAC.
Keep the library in FLAC or AIFF, both of which compress or at least tag reliably, and keep WAV for the specific cases that demand it — an editor that will not import anything else, or a piece of hardware with a fixed format list. If you already own a WAV collection, converting to FLAC is lossless in both directions and gets you back roughly 40% of the space along with tags that survive. Verify player support once rather than assuming it: it is broad now and it is not universal.
Identical
The audio in both
~60%
FLAC size against WAV
Tags
What actually decides it
Where these come from: Typical FLAC compression ratios and the WAV metadata situation. The measured share each format holds in real libraries is on the FLAC and WAV/AIFF pages. For what we can measure, see the measured share FLAC holds.
Why it matters
Because the audio is bit-identical, this is not a sound-quality question and anyone framing it that way is answering something else. The real trade is size and metadata against compatibility, and for a working library that trade has a clear winner.
WAV’s tagging is the part that decides it. The format has no proper metadata standard, so artist, title, key and comments end up in inconsistent chunks that some software writes, some reads, and some quietly discards — which is how a carefully tagged library arrives at a club as a list of filenames.
Frequently asked
Does FLAC sound worse than WAV?+
No — decoding a FLAC returns the original samples exactly. Any difference you hear between two files is the master, the levels or expectation, not the container.
Why do some DJs still use WAV?+
Compatibility and habit. Everything reads WAV, some older studio tools only read WAV, and a library that started that way tends to stay that way.
Can I convert WAV to FLAC without losing anything?+
Yes, in both directions — that is what lossless means. You get roughly 40% of the space back and tags that other software will actually read.
Related terms
FLAC
FLAC is a lossless compressed format: it shrinks a file without discarding any audio, so decoding returns the original samples exactly. It typically lands around 60% the size of the WAV it came from.
WAV and AIFF
WAV and AIFF are uncompressed audio containers — the raw samples, no encoding. They sound identical to each other and differ mainly in how they store tags and which software wrote them.
Lossless
Lossless means the encoding discards nothing: decode the file and the original samples come back bit for bit. WAV, AIFF, FLAC and ALAC are lossless; MP3 and AAC are not.
24-bit audio
Bit depth sets how finely each sample is measured. Sixteen bits gives about 96 dB between the quietest and loudest representable sound; twenty-four gives about 144 dB, at one and a half times the file size.
Explore: WAV to FLAC converter · FLAC · WAV and AIFF · All DJ terms