Gordon….Mcity or another user….

can someone confirm something re flac for me ?
to make sure i'm not going bonkers in my dotage.

some background….

as we all know a typical daw multitrak music production software recording and playing back wav files uses 'look ahead' programming techniques ie filling buffers with wav data before its actually needed…THUS..

it seems to me in an all flac capable multitrak software like reaps that the same thing is occurring ie filling buffers with flac data instead of wav data.
as a step further ive happily had a mix of wav and flac traks in reaper.
eg importing wav bed traks from biab on different traks then adding my vocals and say any guitar traks using flac…in summary ability to create the final song stereo mix from mixing down flac and wav trak mixtures.

eg simple example…traks 1 thru 12 in reaps being biab genned wav rt's…then another 12 traks of my vocs//geetar flac..giving 24 traks total.

now to my question…please confirm for me when recording//playing back flac files with the biab wavs i see no additional files created in the song project dir when using flac ?
am i correct in this thinking..ie no added conversion files or anything xtra over wav ?

from what i see reaps is simply reading the flac audio into look ahead buffers like as in wav. am i correct ? also when reading flac into the look ahead buffer is some extra process occurring with flac over wav ? or not ? ie buffer manipulation ?

bottom line i'm trying to figure out WHY…on lower power junk pc's…useing flac makes the old pc seem more 'nimble' using flac. its a feeling thats 'bugging me' which i'm trying to understand at a technical level…
WHY DOES FLAC ON OLD PC'S SEEM TO RESULT IN A MORE NIMBLE USER EXPERIENCE OVER WAV ?? WHAT ARE THE TECHNICAL REASONS ?? IS IT TO DO WITH HOW AUDIO DATA HEADERS ARE HANDLED ?? OR SOME OTHER FACTORS LIKE WAV IS BIGGER THAN FLAC ON DISK ??

i would love to know the answer to the above questions, cos its been ages since i coded software and i cant see the answers googling. i would love other peoples perspectives on these questions.


a merry xmas to all.

om

my songs....mixed for good earbuds...(fyi..my vocs on all songs..)
https://soundcloud.com/alfsongs
(90 songs created useing bb/rb.)