Flac
lastmod 2025-02-14created 2014-09-194 edits
FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is a file format for compressing audio data. It is a lossless compression format. In other words, unlike MP3, AAC, and Vorbis, no loss occurs in the audio stream.
As with other compression methods, the advantage of FLAC is that it saves transfer rate, bandwidth, storage space, and so on, while FLAC preserves the audio source intact. For example, if a digital recording (compact disc) is encoded to FLAC and then decoded, you get exactly the same audio data. Typically, FLAC compression reduces files to 40-50% of their original size.
Because FLAC supports tagging (tagging), album art, and fast seeking (fast seeking), it is well suited to everyday music playback and archiving. Because FLAC is free software, open-source software, and royalty-free software all at once, many applications support FLAC. Until recently, FLAC support in portable music devices, MP3 players, and high-end audio systems was minimal, but as of 2013 a considerable number of models support the format, limited to portable devices such as MP3 players. In particular, products running the Android operating system can often play the format depending on the music application. However, Apple's currently popular products do not support FLAC playback starting with iTunes, so neither the iPhone nor the iPod supports FLAC.
Josh Coalson is the main developer of FLAC.
On January 29, 2003, Xiphophorus (now called the Xiph.Org Foundation, an organization that develops free codecs, free formats, and so on) announced that it was adding FLAC to its lineup, alongside Vorbis, Theora, Speex, and others.
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