As well as offering our releases as high-quality variable bit-rate MP3s and Ogg Vobris files, we also offer a large amount of our releases as FLAC audio files. This allows you to have CD quality files and convert our releases to any format you wish. Like our other file formats, we actively encourage you to distribute them as widely as you wish.
FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec. Like MP3 files it reduces the size of audio files (compression), yet unlike MP3 the file has no reduction in quality (hence it is lossless), since it removes nothing from the audio data. The file is exactly the same quality as the original CD, yet the payoff is that it is a larger size than an MP3. It works in a very similar way to a .zip file, but has better compression due to the fact is is designed specifically for audio files. Please see the Hydrogen Audio Wiki for more information.
We use the standard FLAC library to compress files, and the standard settings.
For playback we recommend Media Monkey on Windows and Play for Mac OS X. iTunes does not play FLAC files out of the box, but some limited support can be gained by using the Xiph Quicktime Component in both Mac OS and Windows. For Linux users Exaile (GNOME) or Amarok (KDE) are both great. Songbird is a innovative program that is available for all platforms. Of course, you could just decode the file to .wav or similar and burn it to a CD. Or convert it into whatever exotic file format you wish.
Unfortunately, the iPod does not support native FLAC playback. However, installing the Rockbox firmware will allow you to play this, and numerous other file types.
