[ARSCLIST] FLAC?

["McCormick, Kathleen" <kmccormi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

I am wondering if any one has experience with or comprehensive information on FLAC (free lossless audio codec) and its effect on audio. Here is the information page <http://flac.sourceforge.net/faq.html>.

Our systems administrator is pushing hard for us to use FLAC to save and store audio files (as a replacement for wav) and seems impervious to my hesitations (and subsequent explanations) about any type of compression for digital audio (I'm speaking here of our preservation/archival copies), even so called lossless compression. 

If FLAC really does what it sells itself as doing and has no negative impact on audio, then it's something to look into but I need more information before I'm willing to believe that this is no effect.

I appreciate the help and information.


Katie McCormick
Reference Archivist & 
Coordinator for the Oral History Program
Special Collections Dept., J. Murrey Atkins Library
UNC - Charlotte

"Whatever we do we may fail, but if we do nothing, failure is guaranteed."