The free lossless audio codec FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) has released its new version 1.5, which includes several long-awaited improvements that are sure to please both audiophiles and professionals. This release comes more than a year and a half after the previous version 1.4.3 and brings significant improvements to both encoding and decoding processes.
Main innovations
- Multithreaded coding. The most notable feature of FLAC 1.5 is the introduction of a fully multi-threaded encoder. This update allows for more efficient and faster audio conversion, especially on modern processors, significantly improving user workflow. Multi-threaded encoding is available in both libFLAC and the command-line utility.
- Improved decoding. The new version improves the decoder's ability to handle chainded Ogg FLAC files containing multiple audio streams.
- Metadata management. libFLAC, libFLAC++ and the metaflac utility can now create a new file when metadata changes, instead of overwriting the existing one.
- Command line improvements. The command line tool has received several updates, including a full scan of all metadata blocks in test mode and an added check to ensure MD5 checksums match when re-encoding FLAC files, ensuring data integrity.
- Platform-specific improvements. FLAC 1.5 addresses various platform-specific issues, such as improved build compatibility on older API levels. Android and advanced fuzzing techniques for thorough verification.
- Web compilation. With emscripten support, compiling FLAC for web environments has become more accessible.
FLAC is written in C and distributed under the BSD license.
Source: linux.org.ru
