FLAC or MP3: these are the differences
FLAC and MP3 are common audio formats. We explain your similarities and differences in this practical tip.
Similarities between FLAC and MP3
At first glance, FLAC and MP3 have a lot in common:
- FLAC and MP3 are both audio formats. You can find detailed information on FLAC files in this practical tip.
- The audio information is compressed in both formats.
- With both, the compression works in several steps. One of these can be lossless mid-side coding for both.
- Both MP3 and FLAC are actually codecs, i.e. pairs of an encoder for compressing and a decoder for playing the file.
- Both formats allow adding metadata, such as tags.
- Streaming is possible with both formats, i.e. transmission in quasi real time.
Differences between FLAC and MP3
Despite the similarities, there are essential differences between FLAC and MP3:
- MP3 is a psychoacoustic compression method, which means that it changes the signal, as you can see in the picture. FLAC alone changes the way data is presented so that the file can be saved more efficiently.
- MP3 is lossy due to the way it works. This means that information in the original file is lost and errors are added. However, the original can be restored from FLAC files without errors.
- MP3 compresses the file to around a tenth of its original size. FLAC roughly halves the size of the original file.
- PCM files, like WAV, store continuous sound pressure fluctuations as discrete-time values. With a high sample rate and sample depth, this method is virtually loss-free. FLAC files save the data of WAV files in a different way. Nevertheless, the PCM file can be regenerated from it at any time.
- In particular, MP3 files generate noise before strong increases in amplitude and reduce the dynamics of some frequencies and thus falsify the output signal irreparably. With good coding, however, the differences are subtle
- There is already a huge market for music, editing software and players for MP3. FLAC has so far hardly been successful in the area of music downloads, audio editing software and playback devices.
FLAC or MP3 - which is better?
The differences between FLAC and MP3 show which format is more suitable for which application:
- MP3 has the immense advantage that it is available, widely used and compatible with common hardware and software. In addition, there is the enormous compression rate, which is particularly suitable for fast transmission and large music collections.
- FLAC has a decisive strength: It encodes audio files losslessly and at the same time much more flexibly and more compressed than ZIP or RAR archives. FLAC is particularly ideal in the recording studio, but also with very dynamic music or simply for lossless archiving of audio CDs.
Learn how to convert FLAC files to MP3 here. Another practical tip will show you how to correctly encode MP3. In another practical tip, we will also show you the differences between MP3 and MP4.