Why FLAC?
We all know mp3, but what is the purpose of FLAC?
FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec. It is similar to MP3, but lossless, meaning that audio is compressed 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.
There are many ways to play FLAC-files purchased from GubeMusic, whether you're using a computer, portable device or a network capable hi-fi stereo.
Here are a couple of suggestions:
Portable devices/handhelds
iOS (iPhone/iPad): Search App Store
Android: Search Android Marketplace
Computer playback software
PC/Mac: Songbird
Linux: Songbird Contributed Builds
Other:
Mac: MacFlac 2.1.2
Windows: Flac frontend
Computer playback hardware
There are many available DACs (Digital-to-analog converter) which enables you to play back high quality FLAC audio on your hi-fi using USB, Firewire or your home network. See your local dealer for further advice.
Hi-fi equipment
Check out the official Flac homepage at SourceForge for a non-exhaustive list of products.
About FLAC
FLAC files are audio files that have been compressed, but without any loss of the original audio information.
Common audio file formats such as mp3 or AAC (lossy compression formats) achieve their small file sizes by reducing accuracy of certain parts of the audio that are considered to be beyond the auditory resolution ability of most people
FLAC has a compression rate of 30 to 50%. Lossy compression formats can achieve compression rates of up to 80%, but the higher the percentage rate, the more audio information is lost.
At GubeMusic, our mp3s are encoded with the LAME encoder using high quality settings with VBR. 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, you get genuine CD quality audio.
More and more hi-fi manufacturers are adding FLAC capabilities to their equipment, and FLAC is becoming a standard feature of audio equipment.
Sources:
Comments (27)
2010-03-13 Abdi Adl
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2010-04-29 jps
Issues... - metadata and images — no comment, so what's provided? - FLAC working with Apple devices. ITunes can be tweaked with 3rd party software to allow FLAC's to be used, but what aboutiPhone/iPod Touch which a majority of people use. As most users want to be able to use the official non-broken services that the iPhone OS offers (such as the official App Store) so don't want to break the whole device into Rockbox? How can FLAC be used? As other non-Apple devices are not allowed to support ALAC (Apple own the format and don't licence it), hence: - Apple portable: ALAC, no FLAC. - non-Apple portables: FLAC, no ALAC. Do we have to spend more time re-converting to ALAC just for Apple portables, when we might also own non-Apple devices? Thus having to have 2 versions of everything (a FLAC and ALAC one)? I'm new to the digital audio world, and this seems a fundamental problem missing from discussions on using FLAC as a format.
2010-05-04 aka
My FLAC workflow on Mac OS X is to use Max by Stephen F. Booth to convert FLAC to MPEG-4 Audio (Apple Lossless). This means no loss of quality including for 24bit/96kHz recordings. Max allows you to easily add artwork during the conversion process. Max further has a nice option to import converted files automatically to the iTunes Library. Once in iTunes you can use the new sync feature to convert to 128kps when syncing to iPod/iPhone devices to minimise the required storage space. Another important FLAC tool on the Mac is Burn by Maarten Foukhar. It allows you to burn FLAC files to various types of disk media. Particularly interesting is the possibility to burn high definition audio recordings with up to 24bit/192kHz as DVD-Audio if you have player that supports this format.
2010-05-09 Bugge Wesseltoft
Hi Interesting issues here..Speaking for myself I do convert flac audio into normal aiff(works with all softwares along with waw.). Max is a great orogram too and good idea to concvert 24bit stuff via max. Specially with the artwork (metadata?)issues..
2010-07-14 Totningen i Toronto
You have an informative piece on Jan Erik "the engineer" Kongshaug's own recording (!!) but I don't seem to be able to buy it (download). I guess you don't have it. Do you know where it can be purchased? Takker og bukker...
2010-07-19 bugge
Hei Totningen:) We have it right here.. https://www.gubemusic.com/album_14017
2010-09-07 Jason
I really appreciate that you offer music in FLAC. 96k might be a bit overkill (perhaps 48k is enough), but anyway.. good stuff! To Apple users: maybe you can tell Apple to add support for FLAC. It's a free format, so it costs them nothing. They like to talk about open standards (when talking about Flash etc.), but when it comes to supporting a relatively popular media format they rather lock you into their own formats.
2010-09-07 bugge
thanks jason! As much as i admire Apple and thyre clevernes on simplicity, I have to say mp3 and itunes are up for a sound quality upgrade..this is the reason why we started gubemusic. To promote good sound and good music
2010-10-14 Kay Irgens
That's really good news. So the world is not going to end after all? ;-) Thanks for the good work, being ahead of it all the time. A+++
2010-11-12 Willy Bakkeli
Føler meg dum, men jeg skjønner ikke åssen jeg får lastet ned flac-spillere. Dette DownLoadAtoz forvirrer meg. En blir liksom trikset til å laste ned alt mulig rart. : )
2010-12-10 Johan Hauknes
Hei Willy, Gå til flac(dot)org og finn linker som lar deg laste ned WinAmp, den beste og enkleste "player" som spiller .flac-filer direkte IMHO. Et populært alternativ er Foobar. Eller last ned decoder for Windows Media Player her: illiminable(dot)com/ogg/
2010-12-14 Bugge Wesseltoft
Takk Johan!
2011-01-05 Johan
You're welcome, Bugge og GODT NYTT ÅR! Jeg søker fortsatt etter Oslo-konserten med Dhafer.... Har du lagt den ut?
2011-01-05 bugge
Hei Johan. La ut ett spor på Live julealbumet mitt men tok d ut av publishing fordi jula vel er over:) sender deg linken
2011-02-04 kjell inge
Hei, Endelig en som tilbyder av ukomprimert lyd.. Eneste som jeg nå savner er HD audio kvalitet. CD kom som kjent i ca 1980, og lyden har da stått stille de siste 30 årene på 16 bit. Er det planer om å også tilby i HD Audio kvalitet (24bit /192Khz - e.l) ??? Hvis ja - så har dere en ny fast kunde :D
2011-02-04 Bugge Wesseltoft
Hei Kjell Inge. Det er jo nettopp HDlyd vi tilbyr! 24bit96. Ikke planer om 24bit192 foreløpig. Se gjennom 24bit utgivelsene våre. Ecm - 2L - Act Music Vennlig hilsen bugge
2011-02-09 Arild Langedal
Hei Bugge. Flac er sikkert ein glimrande codec, men kvifor ikkje la brukarane få velge format? Det er jo eit herk med Flac om du bruker Itunes mediaspiller. Husk at lagringsplass og nedlastingshastighet etter kvart blir eit lite problem for dei fleste. Då er det vel berre å legge ut wav filer eller aiff filer. Så kan ein sjølv komprimere fila om ein ikkje har plass no på spilleren du tar med deg på tur. Mvh Arild
2011-02-11 bugge
Hei Arild! Takk for at du besøker oss! Kan se på dette men virker som flac blir et standard format for 24bit88-96 khz filer.. Har du prlvd programmet songbird? (getsongbird.com) bedre enn Itunes etter min mening og leser flac direkte..
2011-02-15 Ingar Nybegynner'n
Hei og hallo. Er en CD mann men har innsett at musikk på disk ol. er fremtiden og ikke minst lettvint. Vil ha det best mulig og lurer da på skal jeg rippe cd'ne mine til frac eller wav? Lagring er ikke noe problem. Hilsen Nybegynner'n
2011-02-17 bugge wesseltoft
Hei Ingar! Flac og Wav er vel det samme men Wav er litt mer brukervennlig i forhold til Itunes.. Jeg bruker programmet Songbird som er veldig bra og leser flac. De fleste nyere nettverksspillere(som vil erstatte CD) Leser både wav og flac og alle andre formater i ulik oppløsning.CD er ferdig ja! Takk for at du besøker oss!
2011-05-22 Espen Brynildsen
Hei Bugge, Bra tiltak med gubemusic, men jeg prøver å legge til et CC for å kjøpe noen sanger men når jeg klikker på linken "timer" den ut - har dere problemer med betalingsløsningen? (payment.architrade.com?) Cheers, Espen
2011-06-07 Tor
Just an update on the mac / flac info. I had a hard time finding a good solution as the ones listed wasn't working satisfactory. Some of the programs were buggy, and the plug-in for itunes doesn't play the flack files with the highest quality. However, something that does work without any hassle is VLC. Combine that with Airfoil and you can stream flack wirelessly if you have the equipment to support it. Hope this is helpful for other mac users out there. Have a good day.
2011-06-26 Stig Bjorge
Hei! FLAC er bare en "innpakking" som er praktisk til transport av musikkfiler med "plateomslag" sangtitler osv. WAV formatet er ikke like godt egnet til å frakte med seg alle disse andre tingene. Akkurat som et fysisk plateomslag med LP eller CD inni, bør du bruke progeramvare til å "pakke opp" musikken inni FLAC filen til det formatet du har behov for (f.eks. WAV eller AIFF). Dette bruker du så til avspilling i iTunes eller andre avspillerprogrammer. Noen ganger er det også mulig å spille FLAC direkte (dvs. programvaren gjør omforming real-time under avspillingen. Men dette er IKKE idelt fra et lydmessig synspunkt. Bruk forresten GOOGLE til å finne et program som gjør det mulig å håndtere FLAC med iTunes. Lykke til!
2011-06-27 bugge
Hei Stig takk for gode tips!
2011-06-27 bugge
HI Tor. Thanks for good advices! My favourite is Songbird. www.songbird.com Great program. great layout. plays flac directly..
2011-08-16 Chris Simmons
Hi Bugge, I used to have a program on my mac that I could convert a lot of files to play on any of my mac devices and I believe it used to convert FLAC to a disc and then I could import to my library with no problem. It seems to have deleted itself from my computer and I can't find it on the net. The option suggested in the macflac 2.1.2 informs after download that it won't work as the power pc option is no longer supported. Do you have any suggestions? Thanks Chris, Rio-Brasil
2011-08-30 bugge
Hi Chris. nice to hearfrom you. i would strongly suggest songird!(getsongbird.com). an amazing alternative to itunes, reading flac,wav and all formats right on.. great design and you may burn files to cd on chooseable formats. get it:) best bugge