FLAC

Overview

Free Lossless Audio Codec

• is an open format
• is an royalty-free format
• has support for tagging
• has support for cover art
• has support for fast seeking.
• has software support made available
  • https://xiph.org/flac/links.html#software
  • including free software implementation
• has hardware support https://xiph.org/flac/links.html#hardware
• is used
  • by the European Broadcasting Union [1]

Read more about FLAC: https://xiph.org/flac/documentation.html

The official website can be found at https://xiph.org/flac , the download section at https://xiph.org/flac/download.html and the download link for Windows as of 2011-01-01 is http://downloads.sourceforge.net/flac/flac-1.2.1b.exe

Compression ratios

A compression ratio estimate:

• 7333 audio files, (in 429 folders), winamp: 14 days+14:25:43
  • wav - 207 GB (223.171.483.886 Bytes)
    • flac 1.1.2, 1.1.3 - ca. 89,0 GB (95.627.346.550 Bytes) ratio = 0.428492677
    • flac 1.2.1b - 86,3 GB (92.729.301.460 Bytes) ratio = 0.415506945

# of files	GB	playing time
7333	86,3	350h 25min
1000	12	48h
250	3	12h
84	1	4h

File size

Average tango file per above sample is

• wav
  • 223 171 483 886 / 7333 = 30 433 858.4 byte
  • (223 171 483 886 / 7 333) * 8 = 243 470 867 bit
• flac
  • 92 729 301 460 / 7333 = 12 645 479.5 byte
  • (92 729 301 460 / 7 333) * 8 = 101 163 836 bit ~ 100 Mbit

Data security

2008-02-20 User:Chrisjjj : For me most important is security of data. I have seen programs such as MediaMonkey have only recently had fixes to bugs that corrupted FLAC files so, though not the fault of FLAC, sadly I think more time is needed before FLAC is as safe to use as older formats.