FLAC Export Options

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 Audio then choosing FLAC from the Format dropdown menu.

FLAC Export Setup

Channels

Sets the number of channels for the exported audio file. There are three options

• Mono: single channel
• Stereo: stereo pair with left and right channels - this is the default setting even if you only have mono tracks for exporting
• Custom mapping: use this to export multi-channel (surround sound) files or to make customized assignments between Audacity tracks and the channels in the exported file.
  • Selecting this and clicking on the Configure button causes the Advanced Mixing Options dialog to appear. For details please see Advanced Mixing Options.

Sample Rate

Sets the sample rate for the exported file. Default setting is 44100 Hz, which is CD quality.

Bit depth

Choose from 16-bit (default) or 24-bit (approximately 50% larger file size).

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.