What Is A .flac?

[SamIchi]

I've never seen these before? Free Lossless Audio Codec? So is it an audio file? I can't play it in my iTunes. Any help would be nice.

 

[Yebot]

Flac is a compression scheme that removes the non-audio bits from a truly uncompressed audio file (like a .wav or .aif.) It is a 'lossless' format similar to Shorten (.shn) and Apple Lossless. The idea is that you get a file that is half the size of a .wav/.aif with zero audio degradation.

I hear the flac plugin for iTunes is flakey at best.

I use xAct to uncompress flac's to .aif files. Then I'll let iTunes squash them to mp3 or aac for portability. Flac to .aif or .wav = no loss in quality.

 

[grapes911]

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/137170/

 

[aricher]

Same question was asked yesterday. xACT or MacFlac will convert hese files to AIFF.