FLAC
FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec. FLAC is an audio compression codec that is lossless. It is therefore to be distinguished from codecs such as MP3 and Vorbis, which are lossy codecs and therefore have smaller file sizes then lossless codecs at the cost of a small drop in audio quality. The FLAC project consists of:
- the stream format
- libFLAC, a library of reference encoders and decoders, and a metadata interface
- libFLAC++, an object wrapper around libFLAC
- flac, a command-line wrapper around libFLAC to encode and decode .flac files
- metaflac, a command-line metadata editor for .flac files
- input plugins for various music players (Winamp, XMMS, and more in the works)
"Free" means that the specification of the stream format is in the public domain (the FLAC project 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 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 is also the preferred format for trading live music online. It has a smaller file size than SHN, and unlike MP3, it's lossless, which ensures the highest fidelity to the source material, which is important to live music traders.
FLAC compiles on many platforms: most Unices (Linux, *BSD, Solaris, OS X), Windows, BeOS, and OS/2. There are build systems for autoconf/automake, MSVC, Watcom C, and Project Builder.
On January 29th, 2003, Xiphophorus (now called the Xiph.org Foundation) announced the incorporation of FLAC under their xiph.org banner, to go along with Ogg Vorbis, Ogg Theora, and Speex.
See also
