How do FLAC and WMAcompare? Here's everything you need to know to choose the right format — and how to convert between them.
Free Lossless Audio Codec
FLAC is the leading open-source lossless audio format. It compresses audio files to about 50-60% of their original size without any quality loss — perfect for audiophiles and music archival.
Windows Media Audio
WMA is Microsoft's proprietary audio format. While it offered competitive quality in the early 2000s, it has largely been superseded by AAC and other formats. It's still encountered in legacy Windows media libraries.
| Specification | FLAC | WMA |
|---|---|---|
| Full name | Free Lossless Audio Codec | Windows Media Audio |
| Extension | .flac | .wma |
| MIME type | audio/flac | audio/x-ms-wma |
| Category | Audio | Audio |
| Developer | Xiph.Org Foundation | Microsoft |
| Year introduced | 2001 | 1999 |
| Compression | Lossless | Lossy |
FLAC preserves full audio quality with no compression artifacts. WMA offers much smaller files at the cost of some quality. For casual listening, WMA is fine. For production or archival, use FLAC.
Need to switch formats? Convert for free with SquishConvert.