FLAC Export Options - Audacity Development Manual

# FLAC Export Options

From Audacity Development Manual

FLAC is a size-compressed but lossless open source audio format. The files it produces are about half as large as the uncompressed WAV or AIFF formats, but larger than compressed, lossy formats.

  Accessed by: File > Export > Export Audio... then choosing FLAC Files from the Save as type dropdown menu.

  Also accessed by: File > Export > Export Multiple... then choosing FLAC Files from the Save as type dropdown menu. In this case the options dialog will appear in the center of the Export Multiple dialog.

## FLAC Export Setup

- Level: The amount of file size compression used to losslessly pack the audio data, similar to compression levels in ZIP files. The level settings range from 0 to 8. Level 0 is optimized to encode as fast as possible. Level 8 is optimized to pack as efficiently as possible, so produces slightly smaller files than level 0 at the expense of taking longer to encode. Files encoded at level 8 are rarely more than a few percent smaller than those encoded at level 0, but can take three or four times longer to encode.
- Bit depth: Choose from 16-bit (default) or 24-bit (approximately 50% larger file size).