FLAC is a lossless audio compression format that preserves original sound quality while reducing file size. It is open source, royalty-free, and supports up to eight audio channels. Its fast decoding time and error resistance make it ideal for streaming and archiving. The only downside is its compression ratio isn’t as high as other codecs.
FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, a leading compression technique that preserves the original audio quality while reducing file size. It is an open source and royalty-free format that has been widely adopted for its many advantages in digital audio playback.
Compression techniques take large files, such as WAVE (.wav), and reduce the data bits while preserving as much of the audio landscape as possible. A popular audio compression format is MP3 (.mp3), which shrinks bulky WAVE files and compact disk (.cda) files to a fraction of their original size, making it an ideal format for portable audio players. The MP3 format allows for a huge library of songs to fill up very little storage space, but there is a trade-off in audio quality.
FLAC surpasses MP3 quality by preserving the original soundscape in minute detail. The format reduces the original file size by approximately 30-60% without loss of quality, making it a lossless format. This differs from the MP3 format, which is a lossy format or a format that loses quality in the conversion process.
One of FLAC’s great strengths is its very fast decoding time, or ability to stream even on modest hardware. The technical specifications in frame architecture also allow it to be error resistant, as each frame has the information it needs to decode itself. If a frame is damaged, the data lost in the stream is a simple blip. This differs from other types of lossless formats where the entire stream would be substantially corrupted.
Another feature of this format is that it can handle up to eight audio channels to preserve surround sound recordings. FLAC is also a good choice for archiving audio CDs, as a person can always convert the file to a different format in the future. An added bonus is that it supports replaygain, a technique for ensuring that recorded audio files play at the same volume level.
The only real downside to FLAC files is that the compression ratio isn’t as high as other codecs, which means your files will be slightly larger. With all the advantages this format has, however, this is a happy compromise for many audiophiles.
Considering the falling prices of flash cards, portable players and storage devices, the format will probably only get support. The files can be played on many media players, though not all.
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