Apple Lossless Audio Codec
| Apple Lossless Audio Codec | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Apple |
| Initial release | April 28, 2004 |
| Stable release | October 28, 2011
|
| Repository | |
| Type | Audio codec |
| License | Apache License 2.0 |
| Website | alac |
| Filename extension | |
|---|---|
| Developed by | Apple Inc. |
| Type of format | Lossless audio |
| Contained by | MPEG-4 Part 14 |
| Open format? | Yes |
| Free format? | Yes |
The Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC, /əˈlæk/), also known as Apple Lossless, or Apple Lossless Encoder (ALE), is an audio coding format, and its reference audio codec implementation, developed by Apple for lossless data compression of digital music. After initially keeping it proprietary from its inception in 2004, in late 2011 Apple made the codec available open source and royalty-free. Traditionally, Apple has referred to the codec as Apple Lossless, though more recently it has begun to use the abbreviated term ALAC when referring to the codec.
ALAC data is frequently stored within an MP4 container with the filename extension .m4a. This extension is also used by Apple for AAC (which is a lossy format) in an MP4 container (same container, different audio encoding). ALAC can also be used by the .CAF file type container, though this is much less common.