Unless using a Mac and making use of Apple products like AppleMusic or an Ipod because they do not support Flac format.
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At this point Apple’s lack of native support for FLAC and for MKV (a widely used video file format) is pretty much the behavior of a petulant child. “I don’t want to! You can’t make me!”
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I stand corrected; I do my best to avoid walled gardens.
FLAC, regardless of compression level, is also a perfect copy of the original audio file…
If you buy a file or rip your CD into FLAC using EAC and validated CD drive, then FLAC is defnitely better simply if only because of the tags. Of course some folks will insist that there is some canonical format for encoding music, or that compression is evil but that’s just talk.
But, if you have your library in wav and you will batch convert to FLAC make sure that you have plenty of time and turn on every possible error correction and validation method in EAC.
I did a quick and dirty comparison of level 5 and level 8 (max) FLAC compression on a set of WAV files of about 25GB.
Level 5:
Ratio: 0.563
Encoding time: 4’14"
Decoding time: 3’15"
Level 8:
Ratio: 0.560
Encoding time: 8’7"
Decoding time: 3’25"
I can see the diminishing returns here, as the encoding time is almost double and the ratio is barely different. However, decoding time is almost the same, so there’s no additional computing required for that. (It would have been odd if it was significantly higher for such a small difference in size). The encoding time difference per CD (700MB) would be about 6 seconds, which is small compared to the time it takes to read the data. Space savings are about 3GB/1TB of WAV. Nothing to lose sleep over, but if you keep your data in the cloud like me, it translates in a slightly lower monthly bill.
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These audiophile beliefs started as just talk and are now widely accepted dogma:
The need for super expensive interconnect cables, speaker wires, power (mains) cables and digital cables
Audiophile network switches and audiophile CAT 5/6/7 cables
Audible jitter
That increasing the bit depth increases the dynamic range of a given recording
and a few others that I can’t think of at the moment
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Yes, FLAC was designed for nearly constant decoding time. A good idea because it makes decoder hardware much easier. The effort goes into the encoding, though even maximum is practically easy today (though less so when FLAC was new), but the energy difference isn’t zero.
But as you found, the additional compression effect is very small above 5.
Why not just listen yourself and see if you can tell the difference? FLAC is a smaller file than WAV and supports metadata better. You can always reverse back to WAV if you think there is a SQ issue.
Not in my perception. If I would stick to the ´original´ uncompressed files´ format (which admitingly is not WAV), my core music collection would eat up in the region of 40+ TB. As I prefer RAID1, would have to purchase 90TB of SSD plus a server which could handle all that.
I would not call that dirt cheap so I use FLAC.
That´s a point. I send mine to being switched off in the night using an energy schedule and to deep-sleep when not used for 20min by standby routine.
Wow that’s one huge library. Personally I don’t think many people will have a library of that size.
After reripping my music CD’s from 320 kbit AAC to uncompressed FLAC, my library size went from just over 300 to close to 550 gb. Which easily fits on my Roon Server’s 1 tb internal hard drive.
The rest of my local collection mainly consists of unreleased music, bootlegs and concerts from my favorite artists. And also some compilation boxes.
I don’t see my local collection to grow that much larger to be honest. My Roon library at the moment sits just over 45k tracks, and that includes music added from streaming services.
So yeah I have 0 issues with my ripped FLAC files being without any compression.
Almost everything has been said here, already.
FLAC’s lossless compression is a huge advantage over WAV. And it’s not so well supported on Apple platforms.
So, if you don’t want FLAC for compatibility reason and if you have enough disk space, use AIFF. Apple can handle it, so do Windows and roon. It’s usually not compressed but, it supports tagging quite well.
I use AIFF for all my CD rips. Never had any problems on any platform. Wanted to build the most compatible base for CD rips, and I also saw that tagging WAVs is rather exotic and hardly supported by applications or OSs.
FLAC works fine on macOS, and in most (all) audio players; you can even play them in the finder by pressing space. Just not in iTunes/Apple Music 
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And Macs don’t show the embedded artwork in a flac file. For me a minor problem.
Apple platforms natively don’t support FLAC at all. And you may have to check potential audio and video apps first for FLAC support as well. Don’t know how this is e.g. with Premiere, Final Cut and the like. So, beyond just playing the audio. Saying, FLAC on Apple is not as easy as with Windows 
.
Pretty easy if you don’t use any Apple software besides the OS. I have had Apple Macs for close to 20 years and trying not to get iTunes or Apple music not to start has been one of the biggest challenges.
I use other software and 90% of my music is in FLAC format and I have no issues using FLAC files.
I try to stick on the side of the open standards and not the beauty of the wallet garden, but can see the easey slide towards Stockholm syndrome 
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See, depends on which kind of software for which purpose you use. Others may have different requirements and different sets of apps they want or have to use . Just saw e.g. Premiere Pro doesn’t support FLAC. So, you have to convert first.
We all have different needs and systems. And, in doubt, it’s more likely a specific app you want or need supports AIFF and not FLAC than vice versa. AIFF and WAV still have a broader support than FLAC, not only on Apple platforms.
There’s also a very broad application area of reverb/convolution of sound files which helps a lot applying e.g. (room) correction filters to files. Try your luck with FLAC
I myself wanted to get sure that I never ever have to convert my CDs again in my lifetime 
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Yeah! Exactly what i need 
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I personally prefer widely supported standards, no matter if “open” or de-facto
I’m simply a user here, not a nerd, it just has to work
This I can definitely agree with and as someone who has ripped my library 3 times I wish I had picked FLAC in the beginning.
But everyone to their own and as long as we can easily get the data out, that’s all that matters. Tools like dbPoweramp easily allow you to bulk convert your whole library to different lossless and lossy formats and that works beautifully for me.
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