What is FlAC File and how to Open .FLAC Extension Files
What are FLAC Files?
Just like many other audio extension such as M3U, MP3 or playlist files, .FLAC is one of its kind that preserves the high quality audio from your MP3, WAV files — and one more advantage of making use of these .FLAC extension file is that you can compress it into standard format files to a greater extent (40% of the original size) which makes it really useful.
FLAC is Free Lossless Audio Codec and is an open source file format.
Once you have the flac file then audio files are stored in them which can be later converted from FLAC to MP3, FLAC to WAV, or even FLAC to ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec).
FLAC files try to minimize the sound losses which occurs in mp3, wav, ape files by using it’s lossless codec technique. Needless to say, this file format delivers the best audio quality output.
How to Open .FLAC File Extension
FLAC files can be opened with the help of Windows Winamp player, but make sure you have the latest version of Winamp installed (Winamp 5.541 opens .flac file).
However, if you are not willing to upgrade your Winamp player for some reason then download this little plugin to play the files effortlessly on your computer. Also there are many free flac players available for both Windows and Mac users.
So far, FlAC is the only format delivering lossless sound quality till today along with a good compression ratio! Many players have updates and supports the use of Free Lossless Audio Codec, although it’s easy to convert FLAC into a different file format.
Written by Sidharth on January 19th, 2009
Self-proclaimed geek, editor of blogote, who loves all things tech.
1. FLAC is not one of the kind. SHN, TTA, APE, ALAC, TAK, Wavpack are just a few of lossless codecs available.
2. Mp3 is lossy audio compression codec. Converting mp3 to FLAC will only increase its size, sound quality will remain the same as it was in mp3.
3. Lossless codecs have no sound losses, that’s why they are called lossless. Wav is a PCM container, no losses. APE is lossless codec, no losses.
4. There are better lossless codecs out there in terms of compression. APE and TAK both compress to a smaller size than FLAC. FLAC is most popular codec.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossless
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossy
Is it possible to open .flac on Windows Media Player? If so or not, how do I go about converting .flac files to a .mp3?
Thanks, Jeff
The all-so-popular VLC player too can play flac extensions. VLC player is available in a “portable” version too which doesn’t require any installation.
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