PCM Wav is uncompressed (best quality) and FLAC is lossless compression. FLAC will keep the audio quality while significantly reducing size of the file so ripping a CD to FLAC is a good idea.

[–] Scoopta 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Fun fact, wav != PCM. Wav is a Microsoft developed format that while most often contains PCM data can actually contain a wide variety of different audio formats including MP3 data. Yes, while rare, you can put MP3 audio into the wav container and have a .wav that is compressed. CDs also do not use the wav container for their audio and there are other file formats in addition to wav which can contain PCM including aiff and au

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

That's right, it's actually LPCM that isn't compressed. I don't think I've ever seen people using wav as a container for compressed audio but it's indeed possible, thanks for the clarification.