What the Heck is FLAC?

[booster11373]

anyone know what FLAC is, how to play it? convert it to MP3?

[Wallower]

It stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec. I'm sure you've noticed they're several times larger than the corresponding mp3 would be. They supposedly retain all of the sound quality of the original recording, but I'm not enough of an audiophile to care.

You can download a plugin for winamp to play them here (http://www.winamp.com/plugins/details.php?id=143614). You can also use winamp to convert to mp3. You just have to change your output type to mp3 instead of your audio device.

[JPMNICK]

It is lossles compression, which means the sound stays CD quality as opposed to MP3 which is much worse quality. it uses less space than a .WAV file would, but it is bigger than an MP3 file. it requires special encoders and decoders, and most handheld music players do not support it.

[Stankfoot]

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a350/stankfoot/duck.jpg


http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a350/stankfoot/ben.jpg

[sailor]

http://www.superseventies.com/8_72.gif

[johnniewalker]

It sounds great, I downloaded a van morrison album encoded in flac and you can really tell a difference.

[underdog]

This worked perfectly (http://www.simplehelp.net/2006/08/14/how-to-convert-flac-files-to-mp3-using-windows/) for me.

[oh_kee_pa]

you will find a great deal of FLAC content when dealing w/ live concerts tied directly into the soundboard recording...

if you want the best sound when playing something back then flac is what you want... problem is, and i think this is the case, you will really only be able to enjoy it when playing back on your hard drive because cds are too small of a format and mp3 players obviously play mp3's

[A.J.]

http://stephenvita.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/flak.jpg

[SatCam]

it's like putting a .wav file in a zip archive

[furie]

http://osxdaily.com/2006/12/03/max-an-audio-swiss-army-knife/