FLAC
Free Lossless Audio Codec — MP3-style convenience with bit-perfect quality.
Pro Audio Converter can convert audio files to and from FLAC (.flac).
FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, an audio format similar to MP3 but lossless, meaning that audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality. It is similar to how Zip works, except FLAC achieves much better compression because it is designed specifically for audio.
Encoding Options
Compression Level — Higher compression levels result in smaller file sizes but longer encode times. Lower compression levels produce larger files that encode faster. The compression level does not affect the sound quality of the file.
Sample Rate — The number of samples of audio carried per second, measured in Hz or kHz (1000 Hz). 44.1 kHz is the sampling rate of audio CDs and 48.0 kHz is common for professional video. Higher sample rates result in higher quality audio with larger file sizes. Setting this to Auto creates an output file with the same sample rate as the input file.
Bit Depth — The number of bits used to represent each sample. Increasing bit depth reduces quantization noise and improves the signal-to-noise ratio by about 6 dB per bit. 24-bit digital audio has a theoretical maximum S/N of 144 dB, compared to 96 dB for 16-bit. Audio CDs use 16 bits; 24-bit is common in professional audio and video.
Verify Encoding — With this option, a decoder is run in parallel to the encoder and its output is compared against the original input. If a difference is found, FLAC will stop with an error.