Firefox 51 To Support FLAC Audio Codec

[drSeehas]

... FLAC? Nobody sells uncompressed music ...

FLAC = (lossless) compressed music.

[TheLexMachine]

I think the reason why we're seeing this is because HTML5 and the discontinuation of media plug-in support is forcing the browser to become a media player of sorts and that can work great on Windows, but not so well on Linux, as we've seen with the problems on the video side of things, due to Firefox always being half-baked in many parts.

[nomadewolf]

I use Firefox and i think more support is always good.
But wouldn't full HTML5 compliance be better?
I mean, FLAC is good, but heavy. Not the best for internet...

[starshipeleven]

You can't tell the difference between FLAC and 320kbps MP3/AAC (if you don't believe me, try a blind test). FLAC is useful for having an unaltered, original copy around and that's about it.

I'm sure that if you had a 5000$ sound system with gold-plated vacuum tubes you would not be talking like that. #youarenotatrueaudiophile

/sarcasm

[bug77]

I care and I'm sure that a lot of the people who care about quality, care too.
50% of the music in my computer is FLAC, it would be 100% if I could find the rest in FLAC.

You can't tell the difference between FLAC and 320kbps MP3/AAC (if you don't believe me, try a blind test). FLAC is useful for having an unaltered, original copy around and that's about it.

[starshipeleven]

I think people here keep missing the point of adding FLAC to Firefox.

Music stores can sell music in whatever shape and form they want, Firefox is just downloading a file, it does not give a damn about what there is inside, it does not need to be able to open the files you download.

Adding support for FLAC in the browser is for STREAMING music or videos with FLAC audio encoding, and there the browser is doing mediaplayer.

And most people here agree that FLAC isn't exactly the best format for streaming music.

[Danny3]

FLAC support is useless, nobody is going to stream that as it’s a huge waste of bandwidth, but at least it’s not a step in the wrong direction like almost everything else they do.

No, it's not
It's good for local LAN or for the future where everyone will have speeds like 100Mbps or 1Gbps like there are in some countries already.

[Danny3]

Because basically nobody cares about FLAC? Nobody sells uncompressed music and kids these days use all sorts of crappy headphones/speakers that even a 128kbit MP3 is wasted on them.
I've ripped my CDs to FLAC, but mostly because I've wanted to have a bit-perfect backup.

I care and I'm sure that a lot of the people who care about quality, care too.
50% of the music in my computer is FLAC, it would be 100% if I could find the rest in FLAC.

[bug77]

Wrong. There are several places you can purchase WAV/FLAC music from.

As I have already been made aware. They're still niche (I'm somewhat into music and I didn't know about them).

[FuturePilot]

Bandcamp, Loudr.fm, Humble Bundles, and others I'm currently forgetting about will give you FLAC.

TracItDown and Beatport sell WAV