I think you're missing Roger's point slightly, in that FLAC is a lossless codec. That is, it can be used to regenerate the ``original'' WAV exactly, and it takes up much less space. There are also plugins for many audio playback utilities, like WinAMP. And there are other lossless codecs besides FLAC. Take a look at the http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison.html]FLAC comparison page.