FLAC - links
Author: Josh Coalson
Description: A free, open source codec for lossless audio compression and decompression
Keywords: free,lossless,audio,codec,encoder,decoder,compression,compressor,archival,archive,archiving,backup,music

english | russian
links
The links page is the place for all things FLAC. The hardware section lists the home stereo, car stereo, and portable devices that support the FLAC format. The music section has links to artists, labels, and legal trading/sharing sites that offer works encoded in FLAC. The software section is a loosely categorized list of open-source software that supports the FLAC format. Some of the most popular (some non-free) software can be found on the download page in the extras section.
hardware
Below are some devices that support the FLAC format. For the ones we have hands-on experience with, there is a linked review (see all reviews). Manufacturers, if you would like your product reviewed here, please contact us.

Home stereo:
Squeezebox (our review) | Transporter (our review) | Sonos (our review)
Escient | Hifidelio | Olive
Arcus DAR300 | Blackbird | McIntosh MS300
Helios X5000 | Netgear EVA8000 | ReQuest
MediaREADY MC | Zensonic Z500 | Ziova
Sooloos | HD MediaBox | TViX 4/5000 Series
Other home stereo: Avega Systems' wireless Oyster loudspeakers Denon's SE-32 and SE-52 tabletop players Denon's AVR-3808CI and AVR-4308DAB receivers iMuse audio/video media servers Meda Systems' Bravo servers Roku Photobridge HD via plugin Roku Soundbridge(*) Turtle Beach's AudioTron(*) via Bery Rinaldo's Samba VFS Module (*) device decodes FLAC to WAVE/PCM on server-side (**) device decodes FLAC to MP3 on server-side
Car stereo: PhatBox URAL ConceRt CDD
Portable/Handheld:
Cowon iAUDIO | i-Station mini DX | Iwod G10
KNC HR-2800 | Meizu M6 Miniplayer | Onda VX737
Rio Karma | Teclast TL-29 | TrekStor Vibez
Bluedot BMP-1430 |  |
Other Portable/Handheld: Gemei X-750 and X-760 Hyundai NH-260 iPod via the Rockbox firmware replacement iRiver iHP-120/iHP-140/H320/H340 via the Rockbox firmware replacement Maxian D900 OPPO Blast Portable Media Player Shearer V2000 Zarva MV209
Other: Numark's DJ equipment like the HDX and CDX turntables with integrated hard drive and CD player, and the HDMIX mixer The Pico CD/DVD Duplicator

Reviews:
The main purpose of these reviews is to give an idea of how well particular devices support FLAC. Other subjective comments here are based on our general impressions and are not meant to be thorough or authoritative. We only review devices we have tested directly ourselves.
Sonos: A very slick networked audio system. Each ZonePlayer connects to an amplifier or speakers, accessing music over the network. ZonePlayers are controlled by a wireless remote with color LCD and clickwheel; they can network together wired or wireless and play in sync or independently. FLAC support is excellent; nearly the full subset (i.e. mono and stereo files, sample rates from 16kHz-48kHz, 16-bits per sample) including all standard encoding modes are supported. Also supported: gapless playback, FLAC tags, and ReplayGain.
Squeezebox: A fantastic networked audio player from Slim Devices with analog and digital outputs for connecting to an amplifier/receiver. Has an easy-to-read vacuum fluorescent display, wired or wireless networking, multi-room synchronization, and a bunch of other features. The server-side software, SlimServer, is open-source, runs on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, etc. and has an active community. FLAC support is excellent; nearly the full subset (i.e. mono and stereo files, sample rates from 8kHz-48kHz, 16- and 24-bits per sample) including all standard encoding modes are supported. Also supported: gapless playback, FLAC tags, ReplayGain, automatic transcoding on the server of many audio formats to FLAC for transmission to the box, and external cuesheet support (internal cuesheet support is in the works).
Transporter: Top-of-the-line networked audio player from Slim Devices. Offers all the features of the Squeezebox (see just above), but loaded with pro-grade connectors (including balanced analog outputs and optical/coax/BNC/XLR digital ins and outs), top-end components, and a larger display. FLAC support is also excellent; all standard FLAC encoding modes and tags are supported, as are gapless playback, ReplayGain, cuesheets ... everything the Squeezebox supports, plus support for sample rates up to 96kHz.

| Compression modes | Channels | Sample rates | Sample resolution | Gapless | FLAC tags | Cover art | ReplayGain | Cuesheets
--- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---
Sonos | 0-8 | stereo,mono | 16kHz-48kHz | 16bps | Y | Y | N | Y | N
Squeezebox | 0-8 | stereo,mono | 8kHz-48kHz | 16bps, 24bps | Y | Y | N | Y | Y (external)
Transporter | 0-8 | stereo,mono | 8kHz-96kHz | 16bps, 24bps | Y | Y | N | Y | Y (external)

music
Several labels and artists have adopted FLAC as a distribution format for their works, offering them for sale or free download online. And many online trading communities that share legal, band-sanctioned recordings of live shows distribute them in FLAC format. These are just some of them.
Artists

- Autechre
- Buckethead
- Charlie Hunter
- Colonel Claypool's Bucket of Bernie Brains
- Dave Matthews Band
- The Grateful Dead
- King Crimson
- Metallica
- Pearl Jam
- Phish
- Primus
- They Might Be Giants

Labels and Stores

- AliveAudio
- ATO Records (Store)
- Bleep.com
- Burning Shed
- DigitalSoundboard.net
- digital-tunes
- DiscLogic
- Experimedia
- Fast Atmosphere
- FestivaLink.net
- FretTunes
- Linn Records
- Magnatune
- Mindawn
- morgan leah records
- Music is Here!
- Musictoday
- The Philadelphia Orchestra
- Psymbolic
- Smithsonian Global Sound
- Opsound
- Zunior.com

Venues:

- The Bonnaroo Music Festival

Communities:

- archive.org, the Internet Archive:
  - Live Music Archive
  - Net Labels
  - Open Source Audio
- dimeadozen.org
- dxdt.org
- etree.org
- The Furthur Network
- nugs.net: live music downloads
- Splice.net

software
A large and growing list of software supports the FLAC format. This list is a sample of open-source software supporting FLAC. Some of the most popular non-free software can be found on the download page in the extras section.
Audio encoders/decoders/converters/taggers:

- BonkEnc: Windows CD ripper, audio encoder and converter
- EasyTAG versatile tagger
- Entagged, a Java audio file tagger
- etree-scripts: command-line tools for verifying, tagging, converting, and burning lossless audio files
- FLAC frontend (Windows GUI)
- Flac-Jacket: a set of scripts for creating FLAC files and an HTML index
- FLACTAG: tags single album FLAC files with embedded CUE sheets using data from the MusicBrainz service
- MacFLAC Mac OS X FLAC distribution
- MediaCoder converts between many audio and video formats.
- MP3FS, a read-only FUSE filesystem which can transcode FLAC to MP3 on the fly
- rawrec/rawplay recording/playback tools
- sonice FLAC to Vorbis transcoder
- Split_wav WAV+CUE splitter
- Tag comprehensive tagger (frontend available)
- XLD (X Lossless Decoder), a Universal Binary command-line decoder for Mac OS X

Audio editors:

- Cooledit FLAC filter
- shntool

Audio players/servers:

- abcde (A Better CD Encoder)
- AlsaPlayer
- Aqualung, a Linux player
- Boss Ogg: Audio client/server
- Cynthiune: a music player for Mac OS X and GNUstep
- flac-tools: includes flac123 player
- GiantDisc: Linux jukebox + Palm remote
- JReceiver servlet-based audio server
- Media Center FLAC plugins
- MPD, Music Player Daemon
- MPlayer
- Mpxplay, a DOS player
- Muine: a music player for GNOME
- Musik: an open-source, cross-platform multimedia player and library
- MythTV: Linux PVR and more
- ripperX: X-based ripper/encoder
- Soepkip TNG music playing daemon + web interface
- Thomer's Music Vault: a Linux music server
- VideoLAN client
- Xine multimedia player
- xmcd: X CD player
- XMMS: X MultiMedia System

CD ripping/burning:

- Arson: KDE ripper/burner
- AutoFLAC: automated ripping and encoding to FLAC with EAC (ExactAudioCopy); also has a write mode for burning back to CD for an exact copy
- CDex: ripper for Windows can rip to FLAC via external command
- crip: console ripper/encoder/tagger
- Flacattack: an all-in-one tool that works with EAC (ExactAudioCopy) to encode a CD image to FLAC, embed the cuesheet, add ReplayGain, create lossy files, etc. all in a customizable directory structure
- grip: ripper for Linux can rip to FLAC via external command
- K3B: CD/DVD creator for Linux
- MAREO multi-format encoder for EAC
- Max, a CD ripper and encoder for OS X
- Omni Encoder, a graphical multi-format encoder for EAC
- rip command-line ripper/encoder
- RipIT, a console-based front-end to several ripping and encoding tools
- Wack, the successor to Flacattack which can encode to multiple formats at once

Organizers:

- Ampache, a PHP-based tool for managing, updating and playing files via a web interface
- GNUpod includes on-the-fly FLAC conversion to iPod
- MPEG Audio Collection
- prokyon3, a Qt-based music manager and tag editor
- Rhythmbox, music management application for GNOME

Plugins, developer tools and libraries:

- audiere, a high-level audio API
- Audio::FLAC perl module
- Audio::FLAC::Decoder perl module
- CoreFLAC: FLAC DirectShow filters
- DirectShow filters for encoding to/decoding from FLAC and Ogg FLAC (as well as Ogg Vorbis/Speex/Theora).
- FLACDotNet, a .NET wrapper around libFLAC
- getID3(): a PHP4 script for extracting metadata
- GStreamer streaming media framework
- jFLAC: Java native FLAC decoder
- J-Ogg Java libraries for Ogg decoding
- MediaXW includes FLAC DirectShow filter
- MMIOFLAC, Multimedia IOProc for OS/2
- Ptarmigan media parser for XML
- SDL_sound audio add-on to SDL
- WMP Tag Support Extender plugs in to Windows Media Player to allow access to FLAC tags
- XiphQT component for Quicktime/iTunes that supports Ogg FLAC playback

Scientific, Audio Analysis:

- HASAS HydroAcoustical Signal Analysis System

Copyright (c) 2004,2005,2006,2007 Josh Coalson |  |  |