FLAC for Windows 1.2.1b

Publisher's Description:

FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec. Grossly oversimplified, it is similar to MP3, but lossless. The project consists of the stream format; libFLAC, which implements reference encoders and decoders, flac; a command-line wrapper around libFLAC to encode and decode .flac files; and input plugins for various music players.

FLAC has the following other editions available: FLAC for Linux and FLAC for Mac OS X.

Latest User Reviews:

Reviewer:	oomingmak	Sep 17, 2007
Version:	1.2.1a
WavPack is still my favourite as it supports 32bit floating point (which FLAC does not). I record all of my studio output as 32bit float for subsequent format conversion and later remixing, so WavPack is an absolute godsend in that regard. However, FLAC is more ubiquitous, so as a playback format it is useful because so many devices and software support it.
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Reviewer:	christoofar	Jul 26, 2007
Version:	1.2.0
While other lossless formats may be described as "better", if you can't play them on the device you listen to music thru, it really doesn't matter. And Rockbox is very nice - if there's a version that will work w/ your player. FLAC offers good compression, fast encoding speed, & plays natively on my Rio Karma, Vibez & on my PC, etc. SO for me it is THE best one.
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Reviewer:	infectiphibian	Jul 25, 2007
Version:	1.2.0
I'm still using ancient Monkey's Audio v3.99 which has the best compression ratio (better than WavPack) but i hope one day i can replace it with TAK or some other widely-supported format. BTW, i save from 10 to 50MB per album when i reencode it from flac to ape - it's important for large music libraries.
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Reviewer:	dhry	Jul 25, 2007
Version:	1.2.0
I agree with several of the reviewers below. FLAC used to be fantastic but WavPack is definitely the best for lossless compression right now. TAK is a little too new and I personally won't use it until its playback plugin is backported to Foobar 0.8.3 (there are a couple of plugins which never made it forward to the newest Foobar versions so I can't/won't upgrade until one or the other happens).
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Reviewer:	JEdwardP	May 9, 2007
Version:	1.1.4b
There's no doubt that FLAC is fine when judged in a vacuum, but it doesn't look very good in contrast to its competition. FLAC was passed by WavPack for speed and compression some time ago, and as WavPack is supported by Rockbox, there's no longer any point to choose FLAC for portability either. The advent of TAK, the speed and compression of which even beat WavPack, now makes FLAC seem destined for third place, albeit third in a very strong field. Four stars, and dropping, for this one-time king of the lossless hill.
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