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FLAC (extension .flac)

The Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) was developed by the Xiph.org Foundation and is a free, open-source format that has no restrictions on use and no licensing fees. There is also a metadata component: a ``cue sheet'' metadata block can be used to store a compact disc's track listing and index points. FLAC can be used with any PCM data with bitdepths from 4 to 32, sampling rates from 1 Hz to 1 MHz, and one to eight channels.3.7 Typical compression rates run between 30 and 50 percent A technical strength of FLAC is its ability to be decoded quickly, which makes it suitable for streaming over fast networks. FLAC data is often contained in Xiph.org's Ogg file format.3.8



Richard Griscom 2006-07-19