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Reasons FLAC is
Preferred Over Other Audio Codecs
The compression of audio files and its data is possible
through different audio codecs. These audio codecs help in the
compression and decompression of audio digital data, as you
wish it. There are many audio codecs used today like wav and
FLAC, where FLAC is considered to be the better choice of all
the audio codecs.
FLAC is basically the acronym for Free Lossless Audio Codec
which is an audio format that is quite similar to the audio
format, MP3. The only and main difference between the two lies
in the fact that FLAC is lossless. This means when you use
FLAC for compression of your audio files, there is no loss in
the quality of the audio files.
You can get a better idea of how FLAC works when you compare
its working with the working of a zip file. In the case of
FLAC, you find that it offers you better compression as it is
specially designed for use in audio files. Once you compress
your audio files, you can play the compressed FLAC files in
your car or home stereo or any favorite player as you would
have played an MP3 file.
Today FLAC is considered to be not only the most widely
supported form of lossless audio codec, it is also the fastest
audio codec. In addition to this, it is also a non-proprietary
form of audio codec that is unencumbered by patents. FLAC is
also an audio codec that has an open-source reference
implementation, a well documented format and API and many
other independent implementations.
FLAC is an audio codec that also supports cover art, tagging
and is fast seeking. There is no need of paying for FLAC as it
is freely available and is supported on most operating systems
like Windows, BeOS, UNIX and Amiga.
The main reason FLAC is preferred over other audio codecs is
that the resultant audio data after encoding is the same as
the data that was first used for compression. In other words,
with the help of FLAC, you can compress any music or audio
file you want with the assurance of the original soundscape
being preserved in exact detail.
Of course, there is a disadvantage to FLAC where the size of
the compressed is reduced to 30 – 60% of the original file.
However though there is a decrease in the file, with there not
being any compensation in the quality of the sound in the
file, this is a disadvantage that is overlooked by people
using FLAC.
FLAC is free and available to all as it is an open patent free
codec. There is no need of getting any permission or to pay
for using FLAC. It is freely available on the web, for you to
access and use for your compression of files. FLAC is expected
to remain free for you for a long time, until and up till a
better and more efficient form of lossless audio codec has
been discovered and used in audio compressions.
The additional benefits FLAC has over other codecs is its
multi-platform support, multi-channel support, the use of
documented API and a portable open source (BSD) reference
implementation. There is no point in trying to improve FLAC
for better compression as this only makes FLAC more complex
and more compute-intensive to decode. This in turn will only
make it less supported in hardware.
Source:
http://www.flacsite.com |
