Unpack a lossless recording for editing

A receiving editor may prefer WAV even when your archive uses FLAC. Decompression can preserve the supported source samples exactly. It changes the storage representation, not the musical content.

Preserve the actual bit depth

The qualified native FLAC reader handles 16/24-bit mono/stereo audio with usable sample-count and checksum information. The WAV retains that admitted integer precision, sample rate and channel order. It is decoded and verified before download.

Plan for a larger file

Uncompressed size is predictable from duration, rate, channels and bytes per sample. One minute of 48 kHz stereo 24-bit PCM contains 17,280,000 audio bytes before its WAV header. The original FLAC's size cannot be used as the temporary-space requirement.

Metadata is a separate check

WAV applications differ in how they display tags and artwork. Review the metadata policy and warnings, and keep the FLAC master until both sound and file organisation are satisfactory. See metadata guidance and sample representation explained.