White and Wild by wilshire|oneFLAC
I’ve been reading more and more about FLAC recently, and I’ve been trying it out over the last few days. FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, and it is designed to be a higher quality replacement for MP3 and other audio compression codecs. The big news with FLAC is that it is truly lossless – the sound quality is totally unchanged from the original source, so a CD encoded into FLAC will sound exactly the same as the original CD. The only possible drawback is that file sizes are larger, but with hard drive prices falling every month, this won’t be an issue for too long.
In fact, I just got myself a 250GB external model from dabs for £80 inc VAT and delivery, and now I’m planning to start a new, completely FLAC encoded music collection, safe in the knowledge that this time, I won’t have to start again. FLAC can even be used to encode new audio formats such as audio DVD at full sample rates.
There’s even a whole new range of music players based around the FLAC format, and most of them are designed for high quality ‘audiophile’ use. I particularly like the look of the Olive OPUS which does not come cheap. There are quite a few emerging FLAC players, and some portable ones too. Some people have even hacked their ipods to get FLAC running.
Sometimes it seems that technology is just running out of control, but with FLAC, it seems we have finally got a future proof audio codec.
