LAME VS FLAC

LAME

LAME is a high quality MPEG Audio Layer III (MP3) encoder licensed under the LGPL.

FLAC

A free, open source codec for lossless audio compression and decompression

Landing page //
2019-04-19

Landing page //
2022-11-02

Bored of lame tool reviews? Meet DeWalt's 12 Amp Grinder part A

FLAC videos

+ Add

Can we hear the differences between MP3 and FLAC?

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to LAME and FLAC)

FLAC

Audio Player

38 38%

Audio Player

62% 62

Media Player

46 46%

Media Player

54% 54

Video

43 43%

Video

57% 57

Product Presentation

100 100%

Product Presentation

0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using LAME and FLAC. For example, how are they different and which one is better?

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, LAME should be more popular than FLAC. It has been mentiond 10 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

LAME mentions (10)

Best method to rip audiobooks on CD to a format to listen with iPhone?
You may also need to download LAME MP3 Encoder to convert to MP3. Source: almost 2 years ago
Good and safe ways to convert Youtube videso which are about 2 hours long to mp3?
Depending on your setup, you might also want to install either FFMpeg or Lame as well. Source: about 2 years ago
Question about converting flac to mp3
Today I think LAME is the converter of choice: https://lame.sourceforge.io/. Source: about 2 years ago
Having trouble with REAPER detecting my snowball
In order to play MP3 you need to install the LAME MP3 Encoder fyi for the Snowball issue try this Start> type Control Panel>Sound>Recording tab set Snowball as default recording device. Source: about 2 years ago
Download Spotify playlists
Ok, that's a LAME 3.1 mp3 encode (https://lame.sourceforge.io) in an mp3 container. So zspotify is taking the 320 kbps vorbis audio, re-encoding it to 320 kbps LAME mp3, and putting it into a mp3 container. Doing this makes for wider compatibility, but some quality is lost as you're taking a lossy format and converting it to another lossy format. Plus, and I'm not sure of the equivalency, it would take LAME mp3... Source: over 2 years ago

FLAC mentions (6)

Best iPod for music in 2023 with large capacity.
The Xiph.org foundation maintains FLAC and they have a list of tools that might be helpful. Source: 11 months ago
lossless music on the 7th gen
Lastly, ALAC hasn't been updated by apple since 2016. FLAC is actively maintained by xiph.org and saw its last update this past October. Source: about 1 year ago
[Audio] The MQA Controversy: How an inferior format tried to take over the high-end audio market and caused major backlash
Excessive licensing costs weren’t the only concern surrounding MQA though. MQA is touted as being DRM free, with audio streams able to be stored in the very popular, open source FLAC format. Only the lower resolution 16-bit audio is truly DRM free however. MQA’s authentication watermarking must be present in the file, and properly validated at playback, otherwise MQA decoders will refuse to unfold the audio to... Source: over 1 year ago
What audio format do you put on your iPods?
FLAC continues to be actively maintained and updated. Which, actually thanks for asking your question because in checking sources I noticed FLAC was just updated not two weeks ago. I thik the last time I updated my encoder libraries was after MP3 lost patent protection and dropped licensing a few years ago, so this is fortuitous timing! Anyways, FLAC continues to be meaningfully updated (homepage @ xiph and the... Source: over 1 year ago
ELI5: How does audio compression (mp3, etc) make sound files so much smaller?
There are lossless audio compression standards such as FLAC. Source: over 2 years ago