[Flac-dev] A-law and mu-law

[Martijn van Beurden]

Because u-law and a-law are non-linear algorithms and the mathematics of 
FLAC (and AFAIK all lossless encoders) are build for linear PCM. Adding 
these formats would change the FLAC format altogether, decoders are not 
made to work with it (they can only output plain PCM) Best option would 
be converting these files to 16-bit plain WAV and compressing, but I 
guess files won't be much smaller that way. IMO best is to keep them as 
they are.

Op 18-11-11 12:34, Giulio Paci schreef:
> Hi to all!
> 	I have a database of audio files that I want to losslessly compress.
> Unfortunately I have several 8bit A-law and mu-law files in the database
> and I see from here
> http://flac.sourceforge.net/documentation_tools_flac.html
> that they are not supported by the reference flac encoder/decoder.
> Is there a reason for this?
> Would it be possible to add support for these files in the reference
> encoder?
>
> Bests,
> 	Giulio.
>
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