subject: Flac - Free Lossless Audio Codec File [print this page] FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, an audio format similar to MP3, but lossless, meaning that audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality, due to the fact that it is designed particularly for audio, and you can play back compressed FLAC files in your preferred player just like you would an MP3 file.
FLAC allows tagging, cover art, and fast seeking. FLAC is freely obtainable and supported on most operating systems, including Windows, "unix" (Linux, *BSD, Solaris, OS X). There are many programs and tool that support FLAC, but the basic FLAC project here maintains the format and provides programs and libraries for working with FLAC files. FLAC tools, or using. FLAC for guides on playing FLAC files, ripping CDs to FLAC, etc. When we say that FLAC is "Free" it means more than just that it is obtainable at no cost. Its duty, and that neither the FLAC class nor any of the implemented encoding/decoding methods are covered by any known patent source code that is obtainable under open-source licenses.
Notable features of FLAC:
Lossless: The encoding of audio (PCM) datacollects no loss of information, and the decoded audio is bit-for-bit the same.
Fast: FLAC is asymmetric in favour of decode speed. Decoding requires only integer arithmetic, and is much less compute-intensive than for most perceptual codecs. Time decode performance is easily achievable on even basic hardware.
Flexible metadata: FLAC's metadata system allows tags, cover art, seek tables, and cue sheets. Software can produce their own APPLICATION metadata once they register an ID: New metadata tags can be defined and implemented in future versions of FLAC without breaking older streams or decoders.
Streamable: Each FLAC frame includes enough information to decode that frame. FLAC does not even rely on earlier or following frames. FLAC uses sync codes and CRCs, which, along with framing, enable decoders to pick up in the middle of a stream with with the lowest delay.
Convenient CD archiving: FLAC has a "cue sheet" metadata block for storing a CD table of contents and all track and index points. For instance, you can rip a CD to a single file, then import the CD's extracted cue sheet while encoding to yield a single file representation of the whole CD. If your original CD is damaged, the cue sheet can be given out later in order to burn an exact copy.
