HexaConverter
flacwav

Convert FLAC to WAV

Free online converter for FLAC files. Uncompressed PCM audio for editing and mastering. Nothing to install, no watermark, and every file is deleted automatically.

Drag and drop your files

or

Upload a FLAC file to convert it to WAV. Up to 3 files at once, 100 MB each.

Free · up to 3 files · 100 MB each · files deleted automatically after 1 hour.

About FLAC and WAV

FLAC .flac

Lossless compression for audio. Roughly half the size of WAV, and it decodes back to the original samples exactly — nothing is approximated.

Good for

  • Perfect reconstruction — identical to the source
  • Around 50–60% of the size of WAV
  • Full tagging, and an open royalty-free format

Trade-offs

  • Still far larger than MP3 or AAC
  • Not supported by every portable player or car stereo

audio/flac

WAV .wav

Raw uncompressed audio samples in a thin container. Exactly what came off the recorder, at roughly 10 MB per minute of stereo CD-quality sound.

Good for

  • Bit-for-bit perfect — nothing is discarded
  • No decoding overhead, so editors handle it fastest
  • The standard working format for recording and editing

Trade-offs

  • Very large — around 10 MB per minute
  • No built-in tags for artist or album
  • Impractical for distribution or streaming

audio/wav

FLAC and WAV side by side

FLAC compared with WAV
FLACWAV
CompressionLosslessUncompressed PCM
Typically used forArchiving, high-fidelity librariesRecording, editing, mastering

What changes when you convert FLAC to WAV

This is a re-encode, not a repackage

Some tools can move a stream into a different container untouched when the codecs happen to line up. We do not — every job here is decoded and encoded again, so the conversion takes time in proportion to the length of the file and costs a small amount of quality even where a repackage would have been possible. In exchange the output is predictable: it plays everywhere, rather than inheriting whatever the source happened to contain.

What your WAV will contain

The output is 16-bit PCM — as uncompressed 16-bit PCM, the format CDs use. There is no quality setting because nothing is being decided: every sample is stored literally. Expect around 10 MB per minute of stereo audio, which is the price of a format that every editor and every piece of hardware will open.

Nothing is lost in this step

FLAC and WAV both store every sample exactly, so this changes the container and the file size rather than the audio itself. Convert freely and as often as you like — the waveform that comes out is the waveform that went in.

Tags may not survive intact

FLAC stores its metadata as Vorbis comments, and WAV uses RIFF INFO chunks, which many players ignore entirely. Standard fields such as title, artist and album normally map across. Anything without an equivalent on the other side — unusual custom fields, some ratings and play counts, occasionally embedded artwork — has nowhere to go. Check the tags before deleting the original if your library depends on them.

FLAC to WAV questions