[FFmpeg-user] Preserve bitdepth of input audio file during conversion to wav

[Carl Eugen Hoyos]

Michal Šmucr <msmucr <at> gmail.com> writes:

> When i use straight "ffmpeg -i whatever-24bit.flac output.wav",
> resulting file is always coded as PCM_S16LE.

(Complete, uncut console output missing.)

If you do not specify a (audio) codec with -acodec xyz 
ffmpeg will use the one that is set as default for the 
file type you used. In your case you chose "wav" as 
file type and since you did not specify a codec (and 
since no human being can distinguish between the 
original 32bit source and the 16bit encoding), 16bit 
pcm is used.

Carl Eugen