Introduction
There are dozens of file formats developed specifically for music; some are very different from each other, and others are nearly identical. Of course, most of these differences and similarities are technical, and don’t mean much to an average user. But there are some things that are worth knowing, especially if you have a lot of audio files on your computer.
FLAC is a music file format that utilizes lossless compression. This means that it attempts to reduce the size of the file, but never at the expense of sound quality. This property is considered useful by many music lovers; naturally, they want their collection to sound as good as possible.
WAV is different, in the sense that it doesn’t utilize any compression at all. Therefore, WAV files have roughly the same sound quality as FLAC files, but take up more space.
So with that in mind, some people might conclude that WAV is inferior to FLAC, and they are pretty much right. With that in mind, why would anyone want to convert FLAC to WAV? Unfortunately, there are several reasons to do that. Not all devices and programs support FLAC files, but pretty much everything supports WAV. Sometimes, it is necessary to use this format for compatibility reasons. There are many conversion methods – both offline and online – that are available for Mac, but our article lists only the best ones.
Overview of available methods
The most straightforward way to convert FLAC to WAV is to install a converter program. Although most such programs are available on Windows only, some also work on Mac. This approach works great if you intend to convert a large library of music files.
There is also an alternative; you can use an online converter instead. It is a practical choice if you only want to convert one file, or a small amount of them.
Best FLAC to WAV converter programs for Mac
MediaHuman Audio Converter
MediaHuman Audio Converter is a free converter program for Windows and Mac. You can use it to convert FLAC to WAV, although it supports many other audio formats as well. What’s more, MediaHuman can be used to convert many audio files at once, which is invaluable in certain cases. Other neat features include the ability to export music to iTunes and to convert video files to audio.
Download MediaHuman Audio Converter here.
HandBrake
HandBrake is a free converter tool for Windows, Mac, and Linux. It can convert both video and audio, which means it is suitable for converting FLAC to WAV, as well as for performing many other actions. HandBrake is a fairly sophisticated tool, and gives you the ability to fine-tune many parameters to improve the quality (or the file size) of the end result. However, if you don’t know how to use these settings, you can simply use the default preset, which produces decent results.
Visit HandBrake official website to download the program.
FFMpeg
FFMpeg is a powerful converter program, which is also completely free. However, it does not have a graphical interface, so we cannot recommend it to most readers. If you’re an advanced user, though, and do not feel afraid to use the command line, you will find FFMpeg to be incredibly useful.
Learn more about FFMPeg here.
Best FLAC to WAV converter websites for Mac
CloudConvert
CloudConvert is a converter website that supports many formats; it is not limited to music either. However, it has a lot of settings specifically for audio files. You can trim the files, adjust their volume, bitrate and sample rate, and even convert the file to mono if you so choose. All of these options are available when you convert FLAC to WAV, so this website is very useful indeed. Of course, you don’t need to adjust any of these settings; they are only there for advanced users.
If this sounds interesting to you, click on this link to go to CloudConvert website.
Convertio
Convertio is another converter website that is capable of converting FLAC to WAV, among many other things. It offers similar functionality to CloudConvert, although it’s worth noting that it has the ability to create files with variable bit rate, while CloudConvert is limited to constant bitrate. This is a very niche feature, however.
This link will open Convertio in your browser.
ZAMZAR
ZAMZAR is a simpler converter website. It doesn’t feature any of the advanced options that CloudConvert and Convertio have. But if you want to simply convert FLAC to WAV, and don’t want to do any complicated tinkering, then ZAMZAR will do the job just fine.
Click here to open ZAMZAR.
Conclusion
There are many ways to convert FLAC to WAV on Mac, although most fall into one of the two categories: programs and websites. All of them – at least, all that we listed – work well, so it’s not possible to pick one method and call it “the best”. However, if you have a large music collection, you shouldn’t bother with online solutions. Installing a program will be a much better option for you, as they support batch converting. MediaHuman Audio Converter specifically is a very solid choice.
There are many other articles on our site that you might find useful. If you’re interested in gaming, we have articles listing best tower defense games for Mac and best tactical RPGs for Mac.