[flac-dev] FLAC implementation in Windows 10

Martijn van Beurden
Mon, 13 Jul 2015 11:28:22 -0000

Hi all,

Quite some time ago, it became clear that Windows 10 would
feature out-of-the-box decoding support for the FLAC format.
However, I discovered today that Windows 10 will feature FLAC
encoding support as well, in the CD rip feature of Windows Media
Player.

It seems that Microsoft decided to take the reference
implementation, as the generated files have "reference libFLAC
1.3.0 20130526" as their vendor string. However, the files
generated are slightly larger than my FLAC 1.3.0 compile gets
them when run with the -0 switch, and no padding is added to the
files. This would suggest that Microsoft has 'tuned' FLAC to
deliver files are large and slow as possible?

FLAC is not the only one though, Apple Lossless has been added
to the mix in the same way, but (properly) creates smaller files.