Why FLAC?

FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec. It is similar to MP3, but lossless, meaning that audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality: you get a perfect copy of your CD tracks, but with files significantly smaller than .wav files or .aiff files.

In order to add purchased music from Gubemusic into Itunes in full CD quality (Flac format) download Flac Decoder software here: ALL FREE!

Mac: MacFlac 2.1.2

Windows:Flac frontend

For information and various downloads visit: Flac Home

FLAC files are audio files that have been compressed, but without loss of audio data.

Better known audio file formats such as mp3 or AAC (lossy compression formats) achieve their small file sizes by removing audio data that is outside the frequencies audible to most humans.

FLAC has a compression rate of 30 to 50 per cent. Lossy compression formats can achieve compression rates of up to 80 per cent, but the higher the percentage rate, the more audio data that is lost.

At Gubemusic, our mp3s are encoded to the highest quality they can be. For some people this will be enough, as they only listen to music on their mp3 players, mobile phones or computers.

However, FLAC is the file format for the true music lover. FLAC retains 100 per cent of the audio information when taken from a CD. Which means that when you burn FLAC to CD, what you are getting is genuine CD quality audio.

More and more hifi manufacturers are adding FLAC capabilities to their equipment, and we can expect to see FLAC becoming a standard feature of audio equipment in future.

FLAC software is available for all the main operating systems: Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. There is software for playing FLAC, for burning FLAC to CD, for converting CD to FLAC, and most of it is free to download.

More information about FLAC and the software and hardware that can play it and/or burn it to CD is available at http://flac.sourceforge.net/