Jump to content

FLAC

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by MichaelKuchta (talk | contribs) at 05:21, 1 March 2010 (→Other platforms). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

"Flac" redirects here. For anti-aircraft fire, see Flak. For the Irish organization, see Free Legal Advice Centres.
Free Lossless Audio Codec
Filename extension
.flac
Internet media type
audio/x-flac[1]
Type of formatAudio
StandardSpecification
Free Lossless Audio Codec
Developer(s)Xiph.Org Foundation, Josh Coalson
Initial release20 July 2001
Stable release
1.2.1 / September 17, 2007; 17 years ago (2007-09-17)
Repository
Operating systemCross-platform
TypeAudio codec, Audio file format
Licensecommand-line utilites: GNU GPL
libraries :BSD
Websiteflac.sourceforge.net

Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) is a file format for lossless audio data compression, primarily authored by Josh Coalson.

FLAC reduces bandwidth and storage requirements without sacrificing the integrity of the audio source. A digital audio recording (such as a CD track) encoded to FLAC can be decompressed into an identical copy of the audio data. Audio sources encoded to FLAC are typically reduced to 50–60% of their original size.[2] During compression, FLAC does not lose quality from the audio stream, a notable characteristic of lossy compression formats such as MP3, AAC, and Vorbis.

FLAC is suitable for everyday audio playback and archival, with support for tagging, cover art and fast seeking. FLAC's free and open source royalty-free nature makes it well-supported by many software applications. FLAC playback support in portable audio devices and dedicated audio systems is limited at this time compared to lossy formats like MP3,[3] but FLAC is supported out of the box by more hardware devices than competing lossless formats like WavPack.[citation needed]

History

Development started in 2000 by Josh Coalson.[4] The bit-stream format was frozen when FLAC entered beta stage with the release of version 0.5 of the reference implementation on January 15, 2001. Version 1.0 was released on 20 July 2001.[4]

On January 29, 2003, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the FLAC project announced the incorporation of FLAC under the Xiph.org banner. Xiph.org is behind other free compression formats such as Vorbis, Theora, Speex, and others.[4][5][6]

On September 17, 2007, the 1.2.1 version was released.

The project

The FLAC project consists of:

  • The stream formats
  • A simple container format for the stream, also called FLAC (or Native FLAC)
  • libFLAC, a library of reference encoders and decoders, and a metadata interface
  • libFLAC++, an object wrapper around libFLAC
  • flac, a command-line program based on libFLAC to encode and decode FLAC streams
  • metaflac, a command-line metadata editor for .flac files and for applying Replay Gain
  • Input plugins for various music players (Winamp, XMMS, foobar2000, musikCube, and many more)
  • With Xiph.org incorporation, the Ogg container format, suitable for streaming (also called Ogg FLAC)

"Free" means that the specification of the stream format can be implemented by anyone without prior permission (Xiph.org 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 reference implementation is free software. 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.

In its stated goals, the FLAC project encourages its developers not to implement copy prevention features of any kind.[7]

Comparisons

FLAC is specifically designed for efficient packing of audio data, unlike general purpose lossless algorithms such as DEFLATE which is used in ZIP and gzip. While ZIP may compress a CD-quality audio file by 10–20%, FLAC achieves compression rates of 30–50% for most music, with significantly greater compression for voice recordings. By contrast, lossy codecs can achieve ratios of 80% or more by discarding data from the original stream.

FLAC uses linear prediction to convert the audio samples to a series of small, uncorrelated numbers (known as the residual), which are stored efficiently using Golomb-Rice coding. It also uses run-length encoding for blocks of identical samples, such as silent passages. The technical strengths of FLAC compared to other lossless codecs lie in its ability to be streamed and decoded in a fast time, which is independent of compression level.

As a lossless scheme, FLAC is also a popular archive format for owners of CDs and other media who wish to preserve their audio collections. If the original media is lost, damaged, or worn out, a FLAC copy of the audio tracks ensures that an exact duplicate of the original data can be recovered at any time. An exact restoration from a lossy archive (e.g., MP3) of the same data is impossible. FLAC being lossless means it is highly suitable for transcode e.g. to MP3, without the normally associated transcoding quality loss. A CUE file can optionally be created when ripping a CD. If a CD is read and ripped perfectly to FLAC files, the CUE file allows later burning of an audio CD that is identical in audio data to the original CD, including track order, pregaps, and CD-Text. However, additional data present on some audio CDs such as lyrics and CD+G graphics are beyond the scope of a CUE file and most ripping software, so that data will not be archived.

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has adopted the FLAC format for the distribution of high quality audio over its Euroradio network.

Technical details

FLAC supports only fixed-point samples, not floating-point. This is to remove the imprecision of floating point arithmetic so as to ensure the encoder is fully lossless. It can handle any PCM bit resolution from 4 to 32 bits per sample, any sampling rate from 1 Hz to 655,350 Hz in 1 Hz increments,[8] and any number of channels from 1 to 8.[9] Channels can be grouped in cases like stereo and 5.1 channel surround to take advantage of interchannel correlations to increase compression. FLAC uses CRC checksums for identifying corrupted frames when used in a streaming protocol, and also has a complete MD5 hash of the raw PCM audio stored in its STREAMINFO metadata header. FLAC allows for a Rice parameter between 0–16. FLAC supports Replay Gain.

FLAC is implemented as the libFLAC core encoder & decoder library with the main distributable program flac being the reference program utilizing the libFLAC API. This codec API is also available in C++ as libFLAC++.

The reference implementation of FLAC compiles on many platforms, including most Unix (such as Solaris and Mac OS X) and Unix-like (including Linux, BSD), Windows, BeOS, and OS/2 operating systems. There are build systems for autoconf/automake, MSVC, Watcom C, and Xcode.

For tagging, FLAC uses the same system as Vorbis comments.[10]

API organization

libFLAC API is organized into streams, seekable streams, and files (listed in the order of increasing abstraction from the base FLAC bitstream). Most FLAC applications will generally restrict themselves to encoding/decoding using libFLAC at the file level interface.

Software support

Encoding

Decoding

Ripping

Hardware support

Native

  • TRAXMOD Open source, open hardware portable MMC/SD player supports 44.1 kHz/16-bit stereo FLAC playback.
  • Onkyo TX-NR906 Supports 16 bit/24 bit at 44.1 kHz/48 kHz/96 kHz Mono & Stereo FLAC files through external USB with metatag display support.
  • Pioneer SC-05, SC-07, SC-25, SC-27 and SC-09TX support via external USB (network support verified)
  • Denon AVP-A1HDCI, AVR-4810, AVR-4310, AVR-3310, AVR-5308, AVR-4308, AVR-3808 AV Receivers[12]
  • Yamaha RX-V2065 AV Receiver
  • Escient[13]
  • iAudio (Cowon) - A2, A3, 6, 7, F2, M3, M5, X5, U3, U5,[14] D2, D2+, S9, native support with newer firmware.
  • Olive (Symphony, Musica, Opus)[15]
  • PhatBox Hard Drive based in car Digital Media Player from PhatNoise
  • Rio Karma
  • SanDisk Sansa Fuze, Clip (with updated firmware)[16][17], Clip+ [18]
  • Squeezebox and Transporter network music players from Slim Devices. Current products decode natively. Old v1 units transcode to PCM on the server.
  • Sonos
  • Meizu M6 Mini Player, M3 Music Card
  • VEDIA A10, B6
  • Pixel Magic Systems' HD Mediabox (with firmware 1.3.4 or higher)
  • Embedded Waveplayer- Module with FLAC level 0-2 support, MIDI and serial interface
  • Teclast T29, T39, C260, C280, C290
  • Trekstor Vibez
  • T+A Music Player[19]
  • Linn Klimax DS (Digital Stream) - Digital Music Player
  • Linn Akurate DS - Digital Music Player
  • Linn Majik DS - Digital Music Player
  • Linn Sneaky Music DS - Digital Music Player
  • iriver E100 [20], E50, E30.
  • NMT players
  • Archos Internet Media Tablets [21]
  • Naim Audio HDX Hard Disk Player[22]
  • Samsung YP-U5[23]
  • Creative Zen X-Fi 2

Other platforms

See also

References

  1. ^ Registration being sought as audio/flac
  2. ^ "FLAC - comparison". Retrieved 2008-01-27.
  3. ^ "FLAC Website". Flac.sourceforge.net. Retrieved 2009-03-24.
  4. ^ a b c "FLAC - news". Retrieved 2009-08-31.
  5. ^ Xiph.Org Foundation (2003-01-29). "FLAC Joins Xiph.org". Xiph.org Foundation. Retrieved 2009-08-31.
  6. ^ Emmett Plant. "FLAC Joins Xiph!". Xiph.org Foundation. Retrieved 2009-08-31.
  7. ^ "FLAC Website". Flac.sourceforge.net. Retrieved 2009-03-24.
  8. ^ "FLAC - faq". Retrieved 2009-01-25.
  9. ^ "FLAC - format". Retrieved 2009-11-15.
  10. ^ "FLAC - faq". Retrieved 2008-01-27.
  11. ^ Audacity development team (2006-10-30). "Audacity 1.3.2 a 1.2.5 released". Retrieved 2010-01-19.
  12. ^ Pid=340 "DENON UK". Retrieved 2008-01-27. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help); Text "Home Audio Components" ignored (help)
  13. ^ "Supported Digital Music Formats & Tagging Requirements" (PDF). Escient. p. 2. Retrieved 2008-01-27.
  14. ^ Korean firmware V2.13[dead link]
  15. ^ "Olive". Retrieved 2008-01-27. {{cite web}}: Text "Save The Sound. - Olive'S Free Cd Ripping Service - Preload Terms" ignored (help)
  16. ^ "Sansa Fuze updated to support Ogg and FLAC". Retrieved 2008-10-18.
  17. ^ "Sansa Clip Firmware 01.01.30 Released". Retrieved 2008-10-18.
  18. ^ anythingbutipod.com: SanDisk Sansa Clip+ Plus Review
  19. ^ "T+A E-Series Music-Player". Retrieved 2008-01-27.
  20. ^ "iRiver E100".
  21. ^ "Archos 5 and Archos 7 - Firmware Changes". Update.archos.com. Retrieved 2009-03-24.
  22. ^ "Naim Audio HDX".
  23. ^ "Samsung". Retrieved 2009-10-08.
  24. ^ "Wiibrew Wiki entry for MPlayerWii". Retrieved 2009-01-13.
  25. ^ "Data Compression and Reduction Options for 7-Series Recorders". Retrieved 2008-01-27. {{cite web}}: Text "Sound Devices, LLC" ignored (help); Text "Sound Notes" ignored (help)
  26. ^ "File Details-LightMP3-v1.7.1-(FLAC-bugfix)-PSP-Homebrew-Applications". Dl.qj.net. 2009-03-13. Retrieved 2009-03-24.
  27. ^ Leif H. Wilden. "Symbian OggPlay". Symbianoggplay.sourceforge.net. Retrieved 2009-03-24.
  28. ^ SourceForge.net - OggPlay
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=FLAC&oldid=347032792"