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WAV vs FLAC vs MP3: Which One Should You Export?
A practical comparison of WAV, FLAC and MP3 for editing, archiving and sharing, including where the quality is actually lost and when a conversion cannot help.
WAV vs FLAC vs MP3: Which One Should You Export?
A practical comparison of WAV, FLAC and MP3 for editing, archiving and sharing, including where the quality is actually lost and when a conversion cannot help.
Three formats, three different jobs
WAV, FLAC and MP3 are often listed as if they were ranked by quality, but the more useful framing is that they solve different problems. One stores raw samples, one stores them compactly without discarding any, and one deliberately discards some to make files small.
The decision list I work from
- Editing or mixing in a DAW → WAV. It stores uncompressed PCM, so every edit and export avoids an extra round of lossy encoding. The cost is size: roughly ten times an MP3 of the same duration.
- Archiving a recording you may edit later → FLAC. It keeps the samples that are present in the file while taking noticeably less space than WAV, so it is the better shelf format of the two.
- Sending to another person or playing in a car → MP3 at 192kbps or above. Compatibility is the whole point here, and 192kbps to 256kbps is transparent enough for speech and most casual listening.
- Uploading to a web player or a small download page → OGG/Opus at a lower bitrate, because it holds up better than MP3 when the bitrate is reduced.
- Feeding a video editor → WAV or AIFF, whichever the editor prefers. Both are uncompressed PCM and behave the same in a timeline.
Where quality is actually lost
Loss happens at encode time, not at export time. A phone voice memo recorded to AAC already lost detail the moment it was saved. Turning that file into WAV afterwards does not restore anything: WAV is simply a container that can hold the decoded result exactly, including the damage.
That is also why the same recording can sound identical in WAV and in a well-made 256kbps MP3. If the source was already lossy, both files are carrying the same information, and only one of them is large.