FLAC Audio
| Format | FLAC Audio |
|---|---|
| Short name | FLAC |
| Category | media |
| Platforms | Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, QNX |
| Crush support | Supported (MediaParser) |
| Status | Reviewed |
| Last reviewed | 2026-10-04 |
Forensic relevance
Free Lossless Audio Codec — bit-perfect audio with native metadata support. Used for music archiving, high-quality recordings, and some Android devices. FLAC metadata blocks: STREAMINFO (sample rate, bit depth, channel count, and MD5 signature of the raw audio — useful for integrity verification), VORBIS_COMMENT (free-form key-value tags: title, artist, album, date, encoder, and any custom fields), PICTURE (embedded cover art), SEEKTABLE, and APPLICATION (vendor-specific data). The vendor string in VORBIS_COMMENT identifies the encoding library and version (e.g. 'reference libFLAC 1.3.0') — useful for source attribution. No native recording timestamp — inferred from filesystem metadata or VORBIS_COMMENT DATE field. Identified by 'fLaC' magic (0x664C6143) at offset 0.
Signatures
| Offset | Hex | ASCII (non-printable as .) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| offset 0 (0x0) | 66 4C 61 43 | fLaC | FLAC stream marker ('fLaC') |
Known extensions
.flac
References
- FLAC format overview (Xiph.org) https://xiph.org/flac/documentation_format_overview.html
- FLAC format specification (RFC 9639) https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9639.html
- FLAC overview (Wikipedia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLAC
- metaflac — FLAC metadata command-line tool https://xiph.org/flac/documentation_tools_metaflac.html
Cite this entry
Crush Format Reference, “FLAC Audio”. https://kalink0.github.io/crush-forensics/formats/flac/ — source: crush/data/build_formats_db.py at commit 640a2a9928f4e36a976b89901512a8dce824d093, built 2026-10-21 06:46:19 UTC.
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