I rendered my latest projects to FLAC since it seems quicker and smaller than WAV. Any reasons NOT to do that?  After that, I convert a copy to WAV for mastering.  Should there be any difference between the 2 formats other than size?

I don't think so, WAV is a bit more universal but FLAC is lossless. It takes slightly more CPU to play back a FLAC file as far as I understand it. But the smaller file and quicker export seem to be negated by you having to then create a WAV copy afterwards?

A while ago, I read an article in the "audiophile" magazine The Absolute Sound that showed (statistically) that the very act of playing back (decompressing) a FLAC file introduces a very slight degradation of quality compared to WAV, even though FLAC uses lossless compression. Whether or not most people would ever hear it, I do not know, probably not. I don't subscribe to all of the audiophile beliefs, I just try to enjoy high quality music reproduction on my meager budget. I'm okay using FLAC once everything else is done to store files on a flash or USB drive for later playback. But when it comes to creating files for mastering, though, I think it would be better to not have conversion to FLAC be included in the middle of the process.

ptheisen
A while ago, I read an article in the "audiophile" magazine The Absolute Sound that showed (statistically) that the very act of playing back (decompressing) a FLAC file introduces a very slight degradation of quality compared to WAV, even though FLAC uses lossless compression. Whether or not most people would ever hear it, I do not know, probably not. I don't subscribe to all of the audiophile beliefs, I just try to enjoy high quality music reproduction on my meager budget. I'm okay using FLAC once everything else is done to store files on a flash or USB drive for later playback. But when it comes to creating files for mastering, though, I think it would be better to not have conversion to FLAC be included in the middle of the process.

That's absolute nonsense! Sorry, but LOSSLESS means no loss!
 
What is the world coming to.....

I agree with ptheisen. I export a 24/96 WAV master first before I do anything else. Whether it be nonsense or not, it's still data compression, and I would rather make a FLAC file from a WAV master than the other way around.

Leadfoot
I agree with ptheisen. I export a 24/96 WAV master first before I do anything else. Whether it be nonsense or not, it's still data compression, and I would rather make a FLAC file from a WAV master than the other way around.

My thoughts exactly.
 
I will ALWAYS consider my 32/44.1 Wav Exports my master for any further translation

A FLAC will sound exactly the same as a WAV unless you have a broken FLAC player, it's that simple. Once it hits the sound card and the D/A converters the hardware has no idea what file those bits originally came from so there's no way it could be degraded.
 
I mostly just export to WAV because either I'm producing a final master (needs to be WAV, typically) or I'm just going to encode it as MP3, in which case there's little point wasting time encoding as FLAC first.

good info...  and after i read the post that talks about WAV masters being 24/96,  it got me wondering why I just don't do a higher res WAV master?  I just need to dither to lower sample/bit rates, but I read that increasing the sample rate actually reduces latency, (I/O Buffer Size/Sample Rate)*2, so I don't want a glitchy render, but I guess I can bump up the buffer sample size for the render.  I'll test it, but my recordings were all at 24/44.1, so I don't think rendering at 24/96 will help me much other than the VST fx?  I guess I have always done projects at 24/44.1k since I started in the 90's.
I've been mastering this project with T-Racks CS which only takes WAV, AIFF, and CAF for pre-master formats.

Maarkr
good info...  and after i read the post that talks about WAV masters being 24/96,  it got me wondering why I just don't do a higher res WAV master?  I just need to dither to lower sample/bit rates, but I read that increasing the sample rate actually reduces latency, (I/O Buffer Size/Sample Rate)*2, so I don't want a glitchy render, but I guess I can bump up the buffer sample size for the render.  I'll test it, but my recordings were all at 24/44.1, so I don't think rendering at 24/96 will help me much other than the VST fx?  I guess I have always done projects at 24/44.1k since I started in the 90's.
I've been mastering this project with T-Racks CS which only takes WAV, AIFF, and CAF for pre-master formats.

I do not understand why simple rendering would be at all affected by any buffer size in the system. It is a not a real time mathematical operation and can simply wait until the data is available. As for the issue of sample rate affecting latency, yes, if the buffer size is defined as X number of samples and the buffer is required to be filled before it empties, then the quicker it fills, the quicker it empties. More samples fill it quicker hence less buffer induced real-time delay. But the reason the buffer exists is to prevent a data from overflowing while it is queuing to be processed. And more data to process usually means it takes longer to process and you will need to use a larger buffer (more samples) in that event to avoid dropouts. Your best performance will be to use the lowest sample rate that encodes the signal accurately and set the buffers to the smallest size that prevents dropouts. 

Kylotan
A FLAC will sound exactly the same as a WAV unless you have a broken FLAC player, it's that simple. Once it hits the sound card and the D/A converters the hardware has no idea what file those bits originally came from so there's no way it could be degraded.

 
Agreed. The easiest way to think of FLAC is like a zip file. If you compress a Word doc using zip, after being unzipped all the letters and punctuation will be exactly as they were before you compressed to FLAC. That's why it's considered lossless compression. Lossy compression, or more accurately data omission, is like upon unzipping this thread, certain let ers  were  d leted  on  the  as umption  th t  you   cou d  read  the  w rds  anyway.