<P>FLAC 1.0 is out! It's been a long time coming but it's finally here. Thanks to everyone who made it possible. FLAC is now clearly the strongest open source lossless audio codec and will continue to improve through the work of the open-source community.</P>
<P>The differences since 0.10 are mostly bug fixes but there is a new feature for aligning encoded files on sector boundaries. The complete list of changes is <AHREF="news.html#20010720">here</A>.</P>
<P>FLAC 1.0 has been through a huge amount of testing now, including tens-of-thousands of unit and regression tests, and thousands of real-life CD audio tracks. However, if you're paranoid like me you can keep using the verify option (-V) when archiving.</P>
<P>If you use FLAC and have suggestions or patches, please <AHREF="http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=13478">join the mailing list</A> or <AHREF="http://sourceforge.net/project/memberlist.php?group_id=13478">developers group</A>. Bugs can be filed <AHREF="http://sourceforge.net/bugs/?func=addbug&group_id=13478">here</A>.</P>
<LI>input plugins for various music players (Winamp, XMMS, and more in the works)</LI>
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"Free" means that the specification of the stream format is in the public domain (the FLAC project reserves the right to set the FLAC specification and certify compliance), and that neither the FLAC format nor any of the implemented encoding/decoding methods are covered by any patent. It also means that the source for libFLAC is available under the <AHREF="http://www.opensource.org/licenses/lgpl-license.html">LGPL</A> and the sources for flac and the plugins are available under the <AHREF="http://www.opensource.org/licenses/gpl-license.html">GPL</A>.
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See the <AHREF="features.html">features page</A>, <AHREF="documentation.html">documentation page</A>, or <AHREF="format.html">FLAC format page</A> for more info, the <AHREF="comparison.html">comparison page</A> to see how the reference encoder measures up, or the <AHREF="goals.html">goals page</A> for what the FLAC project hopes to achieve.
Visit the <AHREF="download.html">download page</A> for links to the source code or pre-built binaries, or go directly to the <AHREF="http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/flac/">source</A> on SourceForge.
The documentation is available online as well as in the distributions. The general installation and usage documentation for flac and the plugins is <AHREF="documentation.html">here</A>. For a detailed description of the FLAC format and reference encoder see the <AHREF="format.html">FLAC format page</A>.
If you have an application that uses FLAC and would like it to be able to tag .flac files with custom metadata, visit the <AHREF="id.html">registration page</A> to register an ID for your application.
I came up with FLAC because no audio compression format I could find did everything I needed. Since I couldn't mash them all together (most are closed-source), I solidified all my requirements (now the FLAC <AHREF="goals.html">goals</A>) and wrote the first implementation. I intended to open-source it from the beginning for two reasons: 1) so that people who knew more about audio compression than me could help improve it; and 2) I wanted to give something back to the OS community, whose huge body of work I rely on so much.
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So I started the FLAC project on SourceForge as soon as I had a relatively complete first implementation. Now I'm the maintainer of the FLAC project. You can get in touch with me about it through the <AHREF="http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=13478">mailing list</A> or <AHREF="mailto:jcoalson@users.sourceforge.net">directly</A>
<TR><TDBGCOLOR="#EEEED4"><SMALL><FONTFACE="Lucida,Verdana,Helvetica,Arial"><AHREF="news.html#20010720">20-Jul-2001</A> :<BR> FLAC 1.0 is here!<BR></FONT></SMALL></TD></TR>
<TR><TDBGCOLOR="#EEEED4"><SMALL><FONTFACE="Lucida,Verdana,Helvetica,Arial"><AHREF="news.html#20010128">28-Jan-2001</A> :<BR> FLAC gets FASTER for version 0.6<BR></FONT></SMALL></TD></TR>
<TR><TDBGCOLOR="#EEEED4"><SMALL><FONTFACE="Lucida,Verdana,Helvetica,Arial"><AHREF="news.html#20010115">15-Jan-2001</A> :<BR> FLAC goes beta with version 0.5<BR></FONT></SMALL></TD></TR>
<TR><TDBGCOLOR="#EEEED4"><SMALL><FONTFACE="Lucida,Verdana,Helvetica,Arial"><AHREF="news.html#20001210">10-Dec-2000</A> :<BR> FLAC <AHREF="http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/flac/">debuts</A> on SourceForge<BR></FONT></SMALL></TD></TR>
<TR><TDBGCOLOR="#EEEED4"><SMALL><FONTFACE="Lucida,Verdana,Helvetica,Arial"><B>S/W that uses FLAC:</B><BR></FONT></SMALL></TD></TR>
<TR><TDBGCOLOR="#EEEED4"><SMALL><FONTFACE="Lucida,Verdana,Helvetica,Arial"><AHREF="http://www.baudline.com/">Baudline</A> signal analyzer<BR></FONT></SMALL></TD></TR>
<TR><TDBGCOLOR="#EEEED4"><SMALL><FONTFACE="Lucida,Verdana,Helvetica,Arial"><AHREF="http://www.gstreamer.net/">GStreamer</A> streaming media framework<BR></FONT></SMALL></TD></TR>
<TR><TDBGCOLOR="#EEEED4"><SMALL><FONTFACE="Lucida,Verdana,Helvetica,Arial"><AHREF="http://www.lammerts.org/software/soepkiptng/">Soepkip TNG</A> music playing daemon + web interface<BR></FONT></SMALL></TD></TR>
<TR><TDBGCOLOR="#EEEED4"><SMALL><FONTFACE="Lucida,Verdana,Helvetica,Arial"><AHREF="http://smurf.sourceforge.net/">Smurf</A> Sound Font Editor<BR></FONT></SMALL></TD></TR>
