FLAC reduces bandwidth and storage requirements without sacrificing the integrity of the audio source. A digital audio recording (such as a CD track) encoded to FLAC can be decompressed into an identical copy of the audio data. Audio sources encoded to FLAC are typically reduced to 50–60% of their original size.
FLAC is suitable for everyday audio playback and archival, with support for tagging, cover art and fast seeking. FLAC's free and open source royalty-free nature makes it well-supported by many software applications. FLAC playback support in portable audio devices and dedicated audio systems is limited at this time compared to lossy formats like MP3.[3], but Flac is supported out of the box by more hardware devices than competing lossless formats like Wavpack.
The FLAC project consists of:
The stream formats
A simple container format for the stream, also called FLAC (or Native FLAC)
libFLAC, a library of reference encoders and decoders, and a metadata interface
libFLAC++, an object wrapper around libFLAC
flac, a command-line program based on libFLAC to encode and decode FLAC streams
metaflac, a command-line metadata editor for .flac files and for applying Replay Gain
Input plugins for various music players (Winamp, XMMS, foobar2000, musikCube, and many more)
With Xiph.org incorporation, the Ogg container format, suitable for streaming (also called Ogg FLAC)
"Free" means that the specification of the stream format can be implemented by anyone without prior permission (Xiph.org reserves the right to set the FLAC specification and certify compliance), and that neither the FLAC format nor any of the implemented encoding/decoding methods are covered by any patent. It also means that the reference implementation is free software. The sources for libFLAC and libFLAC++ are available under Xiph.org's BSD license, and the sources for flac, metaflac, and the plugins are available under the GPL.
"FLAC" and "Flac" redirect here. For anti-aircraft fire, see Flak. For the Irish organisation, see Free Legal Advice Centres.
Free Lossless Audio Codec
Filename extension .flac
Internet media type audio/x-flac
Type of format Audio
Free Lossless Audio Codec Developer(s) Xiph.Org Foundation
Stable release 1.2.1 / September 17, 2007
Operating system Cross-platform
Type Audio codec, Audio file format
License command-line utilites: GNU GPL
libraries :BSD
Website flac.sf.net
Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) is a file format for lossless audio data compression. During compression, FLAC does not lose quality from the audio stream, as lossy compression formats such as MP3, AAC, and Vorbis do. Josh Coalson is the primary author of FLAC.
