1.3.4 FLAC Decoder Library

FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, an audio format similar to MP3, but lossless, meaning that audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality. FLAC stands out as the fastest and most widely supported lossless audio codec, and the only one that at once is non-proprietary, is unencumbered by patents, has an open-source reference implementation, has a well documented format and API, and has several other independent implementations.

In Harmony 3, the FLAC decoder is limited to 16-bit, 2 channel audio, typically recorded at either CD quality (44100 samples/second) or DVD quality (48000 samples/second).

In Harmony 3, an open-source FLAC decoder called XIPH FLAC is used. The main portion of the code is located in a separate repository called xiph_flac\. The FLAC Decoder Library in the audio repository is just a wrapper that calls functions in the main library (which is brought in automatically when you generate code in MHC, if the the FLAC Decoder Library is selected). Note that this library uses heap.