[Flac] uncompressed FLAC

Ben Allison
Fri, 09 Mar 2012 22:02:38 -0000

The FLAC standard allows for frames to be stored "as-is", specifically
with the "SUBFRAME_VERBATIM" type -
http://flac.sourceforge.net/format.html#subframe_verbatim
Spoon's implementation is likely using this feature to store uncompressed
data within a valid FLAC file that can be understood by any compliant FLAC
decoder.

-Ben Allison

> What dbPowerAmp does is encapsulate the wav file into a FLAC container
> without actually compressing it. I guess it can be a bit arguable if you
> can technically call it a FLAC file :)
> It's like using "Store" mode in RAR, for instance. The idea
behing this
> "uncompressed FLAC" is to give the FLAC tagging abilities to
people who
> don't want to compress their files. But as WAV is lacking in the tags
> department (some workarounds, but most players are not compatible with
> those), dbPowerAmp uses the FLAC structure and inputs the uncompressed
> data inside.
> As far as I understood from the webpage, that's it. I don't think
that
> option is available with the command-line flac. I think dbPowerAmp (and
> this is me purely speculating, mind you) manually builds the file by
> adding a FLAC header where the tags can be stored and then inserts the
> uncompressed wav in the data field of the file or something equivalent.
>
> Cheers,