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Add to SafariWhen comparing LPCM WAV vs MP3, the Slant community recommends LPCM WAV for most people. In the question“What is the best audio codec for music” LPCM WAV is ranked 3rd while MP3 is ranked 6th. The most important reason people chose LPCM WAV is:
Being uncompressed, WAV files are sure to keep all of the original audio data.
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Lossless
Being uncompressed, WAV files are sure to keep all of the original audio data.
Pro Compatibility
Being a very old codec, its compatibility is widespread.
Pro Universal
Being a mature format, its compatibility is universal and its use is widespread.
Cons
Con Proprietary
WAV is developed by IBM and Microsoft and released under a proprietary license.
Con Uncompressed
WAV is uncompressed Linear PCM audio, which would take up a significant amount of disk space and is not very efficient (no size difference between a minute of audio and a minute of silence).
Con Bitrate cap
According to its ISO standards, MP3 is not to be encoded at over 320kbps bitrate.
Con Lossy
Loses (a lot of) audio data to compression.
Con Inefficient compression
Its compression algorithms lacks behind AAC in terms of efficiency and loses more audio data at the same bitrate.
