FLAC 1.4.3 Released With More Optimizations, Drops PowerPC-Specific Code

FLAC 1.4.3 is out today as the first update to this Xiph.Org royalty-free, lossless audio codec since last October.

As with most audio encoder/decoder releases, performance optimizations remain a primary focus. With FLAC 1.4.3 there are reported "large improvements" in encoder speed for all preset levels. There is also speed-ups observed for CPUs with BMI2 instruction support. FLAC 1.4.3 has also dropped all of its PowerPC-specific code. After working out all that PowerPC code, it was turned out to not offer any performance improvements compared to the generic code paths.

FLAC 1.4.3 also has many bug fixes for issues uncovered during fuzzing, fixes building on the Universal Windows Platform, various metadata handling improvements, and other changes.

Downloads and more details on the FLAC 1.4.3 update via GitHub.