FLAC
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Description
FLAC is a file format and codec for losslessly compressed audio. It can store audio with a PCM bit resolution up to 32 bits per sample and sampling rates up to 640 kHz.
The format is open and royalty-free. The reference implementation is cross-platform and dual-licensed, command-line utilities (e.g. encoder, decoder and metadata editor) use GNU GPL and code libraries use BSD.
FLAC is suitable for archiving for many reasons:
- open format
- support for metadata tagging
- lossless (no generation loss if you need to convert to another format)
- disk size effective (audio is typically reduced to 50-60% of original size)
- data integrity
- error resistant (bit faults are contained within a frame, typically a fraction of a second)
Playback
Hardware
- Squeezebox
- Transporter
- Sonos
Software
- Amarok - cross-platform, open source
- foobar2000 - Windows, non-commercial
- VLC - cross-platform, open source
- Winamp - Windows, commercial
- MediaMonkey - Windows, commercial
