FLAC

Description
FLAC is a file format and codec for losslessly compressed audio. It can store audio with a PCM bit resolution up to 32 bits per sample and sampling rates up to 640 kHz.

The format is open and royalty-free. The reference implementation is cross-platform and dual-licensed, command-line utilities (e.g. encoder, decoder and metadata editor) use GNU GPL and code libraries use BSD.

FLAC is suitable for archiving for many reasons:
 * open format
 * support for metadata tagging
 * lossless (no generation loss if you need to convert to another format)
 * disk size effective (audio is typically reduced to 50-60% of original size)
 * data integrity
 * error resistant (bit faults are contained within a frame, typically a fraction of a second)

Hardware

 * Squeezebox
 * Transporter
 * Sonos

Software

 * Amarok - cross-platform, open source
 * foobar2000 - Windows, non-commercial
 * VLC - cross-platform, open source
 * Winamp - Windows, commercial

Links

 * Home of FLAC project
 * FLAC format description