FLAC - a Unique Audio Codec

Author: hostarticles | Posted: 16.02.2012

Codecs is software programs that compress and decompress a digital audio signal to a different file format supported by the operating system. A particular codec is meant for a specific type of audio output and hence not all codecs are supported by an audio player. Free lossless audio codecs is a type of audio codec which compresses a digital audio in such a way that the file size gets reduced without causing any loss of information from it. In fact, the size of a digital audio can be reduced to as low as half of its original size and can be decompressed into a similar copy of the original using FLAC.

FLAC can be downloaded from the web and is free software available as an open format. This audio codec is supported for fast-seeking, metadata tagging and even alum cover art. FLAC is generally compatible with portable audio devices and specific audio systems like for example Mp3. The use of FLAC can be found more in hardware devices in comparison to audio systems. This type of audio codecs is suitable for fixed-point samples thereby guarantying completely that the encoder is lossless. Capable of handling PCM bit resolution ranging in between four to thirty-two bits per sample, FLAC provides a user up to eight channels which can be accordingly sub-divided as stereo or 5.1 channel surround enabling the user to take the advantage of inter-channel co-relation added to file size compression.

Moreover, this audio codec can handle sampling rates ranging up to six hundred-thousand hertz which makes this codec distinguished as unique. FLAC takes the advantage of linear prediction and stores the data in form of a series of uncorrelated numbers using Golomb-Rice coding during digital audio conversion. FLAC uses the procedure of run-length encoding for blocks of identical samples.

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