MP3 vs FLAC vs WAV vs M4A vs OGG — Audio Formats Compared
You have an album you want to keep. Maybe you ripped it from a CD, maybe you bought it from Bandcamp, maybe you pulled it from a friend's hard drive. The export dropdown gives you MP3, FLAC, WAV, and a dozen others. You've heard that MP3 "throws away data," that FLAC is "lossless," and that WAV is "uncompressed" — but what does any of that actually mean for the music sitting on your drive?
All three can sound great. They just solve different problems. MP3 is about saving space. FLAC is about keeping everything while still saving some space. WAV is about keeping everything, period. The right choice depends on what you're doing with the files.
Lossy vs lossless vs uncompressed
A CD stores audio as raw PCM data: 44,100 samples per second, 16 bits per sample, two channels. That's 1,411 kbps — about 10 MB per minute of music.
Lossy compression (MP3, AAC, Opus) analyzes the audio and permanently removes parts you're unlikely to hear — sounds masked by louder sounds, frequencies at the edge of human perception. The file gets dramatically smaller, but the discarded data is gone. Lossless compression (FLAC, ALAC) uses mathematical patterns to reduce file size without removing anything. Decode the file and you get back the exact original samples. Uncompressed (WAV) is just the raw samples with a header. No analysis, no removal, no clever math.
MP3 — the universal trade-off
MP3 has been around since 1993. Despite being technically surpassed by AAC and Opus, it remains the most widely supported audio format on the planet. Every phone, car stereo, Bluetooth speaker, and piece of audio software can handle it.
The encoder applies a psychoacoustic model to each frame of audio and decides what to keep and what to discard. At higher bitrates, it keeps more. Here's what the common bitrates actually sound like:
128 kbps — the old Napster-era default. Fine for podcasts. Trained ears notice smearing in the highs. About 1 MB per minute.
192 kbps — most listeners can't tell it apart from higher bitrates on typical speakers. Around 1.5 MB per minute.
256 kbps — the sweet spot. Transparent on all but the most revealing headphones. About 2 MB per minute.
320 kbps — the MP3 ceiling. Virtually indistinguishable from CD source in blind tests. Spotify's "Very High" setting. About 2.5 MB per minute.
FLAC — everything, but smaller
FLAC was released in 2001 by Xiph.org. It compresses audio to about 50-60% of the original WAV size without losing a single sample. Decode a FLAC file and you get the exact PCM data that went in — mathematically identical, verifiable by MD5 checksums.
FLAC supports sample rates up to 655,350 Hz and bit depths up to 32 bits. A CD-quality track compresses to about 5-6 MB per minute. A 24-bit/96 kHz high-res track runs about 15-18 MB per minute.
Compatibility is excellent. Android plays FLAC natively. iOS has supported it since iOS 11. Windows 10 and later handle it out of the box. Tidal, Qobuz, Deezer HiFi, and Amazon Music HD all use FLAC for lossless delivery. FLAC also handles metadata well — artist, album, track number, cover art, replay gain — unlike WAV, which is essentially a black hole for tags.
WAV — raw, universal, huge
WAV is Microsoft's container for raw PCM data, dating back to 1991. At CD quality, files run about 10 MB per minute. A full album is 400-700 MB. At 24-bit/96 kHz, you're looking at about 33 MB per minute.
WAV's strength is production. Every DAW — Pro Tools, Logic, Ableton, Reaper, FL Studio — works with WAV natively. When a mix engineer asks for stems, they want WAV. It's the lingua franca of professional audio.
The downsides: enormous files and terrible metadata. The RIFF INFO chunk can technically store tags, but most players ignore them. Cover art support is nonexistent. You end up relying entirely on filenames and folder structure.
File size comparison — one 5-minute stereo track
WAV (16-bit, 44.1 kHz): ~50 MB
FLAC (16-bit, 44.1 kHz): ~28 MB
MP3 at 320 kbps: ~12 MB
MP3 at 256 kbps: ~10 MB
MP3 at 128 kbps: ~5 MB
For 24-bit/96 kHz high-res audio, multiply WAV and FLAC by roughly 3.2x. MP3 can't store high-res — it maxes out at 48 kHz.
Sample rates and bit depth
Audio specs involve two key numbers. Sample rate — 44.1 kHz, 48 kHz, 96 kHz, 192 kHz — tells you how many snapshots of the waveform are captured each second. By the Nyquist theorem, 44.1 kHz captures everything up to 22.05 kHz, comfortably above the 20 kHz ceiling of human hearing. Bit depth determines dynamic range: 16-bit gives 96 dB, plenty for any recorded album; 24-bit gives 144 dB, useful mainly as headroom during recording and mixing.
MP3 supports up to 48 kHz and 16-bit equivalent. FLAC handles up to 32-bit and absurdly high sample rates. WAV has no inherent limits. If you've bought 24-bit/96 kHz files from Qobuz or HDtracks, only FLAC or WAV preserve that resolution — MP3 would downsample to fit its limits.
When to use each format
Use MP3 when storage or bandwidth matters. Phone libraries with hundreds of albums, Bluetooth playback (every Bluetooth codec recompresses anyway, so lossless provides no benefit), sharing files via email or chat, and background listening where ambient noise masks the subtleties. At 256 kbps, MP3 is transparent for most listeners in most situations.
Use FLAC for archiving and critical listening. It's your master copy. From FLAC, you can generate MP3, AAC, Opus, or whatever format comes next — always from the original, never stacking lossy on lossy. On good headphones in a quiet room, the difference between 320 kbps MP3 and FLAC is subtle but real on certain recordings, particularly acoustic music with complex high-frequency detail. If you're downloading from Bandcamp, Qobuz, or HDtracks, get the FLAC.
Use WAV for production work. Recording, mixing, mastering, and sending stems to collaborators. WAV avoids any encoding overhead and is the universal exchange format for professional audio. For personal listening, WAV has no advantage over FLAC — same audio, twice the size, worse metadata.
The lossy-to-lossy trap
One thing to avoid: converting between lossy formats. Turning a 256 kbps MP3 into AAC means the AAC encoder is compressing an already-compressed signal. Artifacts from the first pass get baked in and new ones pile on top. Each generation degrades the audio further.
This is the strongest practical argument for keeping FLAC archives. FLAC to MP3 is one clean step from the original. MP3 to AAC stacks two lossy compressions. Converting between lossless formats — FLAC to WAV, FLAC to ALAC, WAV to FLAC — is always safe. The decoded audio is identical every time.
Streaming vs. owning
If you stream through Spotify, Apple Music, or Tidal, the service picks the format. Spotify uses Ogg Vorbis up to 320 kbps. Apple Music uses AAC at 256 kbps or ALAC for lossless. Tidal and Qobuz stream FLAC.
Format choice matters when you own files. A library of 320 kbps MP3 files is locked at that quality forever. A library of FLAC files can be re-encoded to any future format at the highest quality. The practical recommendation: download or rip in FLAC when available, convert to MP3 for devices that need it. Use the iFormat audio converter or the MP3 converter to move between formats.
Frequently asked questions
Q: Can you hear the difference between 320 kbps MP3 and FLAC?
On earbuds or laptop speakers, no. On high-end headphones in a quiet room, some listeners can pick out differences on certain recordings. In controlled blind tests, even trained listeners struggle to reliably tell them apart.
Q: Does FLAC sound better than WAV?
No. FLAC is lossless — the decoded output is bit-for-bit identical to WAV. They produce the exact same audio signal. FLAC just takes up less space and supports proper metadata.
Q: Is it safe to delete WAV files after converting to FLAC?
Yes. You can verify by decoding the FLAC back to WAV and comparing — the PCM data will be identical. This is exactly what lossless means.
Q: What about Samsung 3GA files or APE files?
3GA files are Samsung's voice recording format — a completely different situation from music files. APE files are lossless like FLAC but with severely limited device support. Converting APE to FLAC is lossless and gives you a format that actually plays everywhere.
Q: Why don't streaming services use MP3?
MP3 is technically outdated. AAC and Opus deliver better quality at the same bitrate. For lossless streaming, FLAC is the standard because it's open and compresses efficiently. MP3 persists mainly because of its universal device compatibility — everything ever made can play it.
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