FLAC
| Free Lossless Audio Codec | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Xiph.Org Foundation, Josh Coalson, Erik de Castro Lopo |
| Initial release | 20 July 2001 |
| Stable release | 1.5.0
/ 11 February 2025 |
| Repository | |
| Written in | C, C++ |
| Operating system | Cross-platform |
| Type | Codec |
| License | Command-line tools: GNU GPL Libraries: BSD |
| Website | xiph |
| Filename extension |
.flac |
|---|---|
| Internet media type |
audio/flac |
| Uniform Type Identifier (UTI) | org.xiph.flac |
| Magic number | fLaC |
| Type of format | Lossless audio |
| Standard | RFC 9639 |
| Open format? | Yes |
| Free format? | Yes |
FLAC (/flæk/; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software package that includes a codec implementation. Digital audio compressed by FLAC's algorithm can typically be reduced to between 50 and 70 percent of its original size and decompresses to an identical copy of the original audio data.
FLAC is an open format with royalty-free licensing and a reference implementation which is free software. FLAC supports metadata tagging, album cover art, and fast seeking.