FLAC is an audio codec. It’s main advantages are lossless compression and the codec’s open nature. FLAC (aka Free Lossless Audio Codec) files are typically used for storing music in high quality, for example as a digital backup of a CD. The codec is well supported by both software and hardware music players, though it’s not nearly as popular as MP3. FLAC can also be used for audio streaming. Audio files that use this format usually have a .flac or sometimes .ogg extension.

As a lossless compression format, FLAC compresses audio without any loss in quality. This is similar to other, general-purpose file archivers like WinZip and RAR, but the .flac codec is optimized for compressing audio data. On average, it can compress a raw audio file (for example .wav) by 30%-50%. Compared to lossy codecs such as MP3, .flac files tend to be several times larger. It is still widely debated whether this increase in size is worth the (sometimes imperceptible) quality improvement. Either way, with the ever-growing hard drive capacity and the spreading availabilty of broadband Internet, the issue is likely to become moot in a few years. Read the rest of this entry »