Windows 10 will make it easier for
audiophiles to enjoy lossless music, with support for the popular FLAC format
across all modern and desktop programs.
Microsoft’s Gabriel Aul revealed the plans for FLAC support on Twitter, with a screenshot of FLAC files loaded in
Windows Media Player. He then clarified that this is platform-level support, so
any modern or Win32 application will be able to handle the format.
Aul’s screenshot of FLAC files in
Windows Media Player.
FLAC has become the de facto
standard format for live, audience-recorded music, and is also used by
high-quality music vendors such as HDTracks. While FLAC files tend to be larger
than MP3s, they don’t remove any audio information during the compression
process. That means the audio quality won’t degrade if the user rips audio from
a CD and burns it back again, or repeatedly converts to and from uncompressed
WAV files.
In previous versions of Windows,
FLAC users had to download third-party media players or plug-ins that
specifically supported the format. Windows 10 should change that, making FLAC as
easy to access as a WAV file or an MP3 in all kinds of media applications.
Why this matters: Windows 10’s FLAC support will be a big boost for the
format, as users will be able to just click on a file to play it with no extra
hassle. Just to speculate a bit, if users can also sync
their FLAC files through OneDrive and play them in Xbox Music across
devices, that’d be a powerful tool for lossless audio fans—and one that other
major music locker services aren’t offering.
No comments:
Post a Comment