[Flac] Is FLAC hardware independent?

[Brian Willoughby]

Which "output file" are you referring to?  Also, your question is  
incompletely specified, because you do not qualify whether the input  
is the same when you expect the output to be the same.

When uncompressing, the final results are lossless, therefore it is  
hardware independent when you consider the total process.

When compressing, the results depend upon the implementation.  In  
this respect, the intermediate output file is both hardware dependent  
and version dependent.  In other words, you can get a different  
output file size even on the same hardware.

Perhaps there is a misunderstanding here, by trying to fit FLAC into  
the same criterion as lossy formats.  Lossless formats do not have a  
fixed rate, nor do they have a fixed compression ratio.  Lossy  
formats throw away information in order to achieve a desired rate or  
ratio, but lossless formats cannot throw away information and  
therefore cannot reach the same goal every time.  Results vary  
greatly depending upon the input material and the implementation,  
which varies by version and hardware.

Brian Willoughby
Sound Consulting


On May 16, 2011, at 13:51, Fernando Alberto Marengo Rodriguez wrote:
> We are investigating about some state-of-the-art lossless audio  
> codecs and their performance in terms of  rate and compression  
> ratio. Therefore, it is very important to us to know whether a  
> codec is hardware independent, i.e. if it produces the same output  
> file regardless of the hardware. Could you please tell me whether  
> FLAC is hardware independent?
> Thank you very much in advance.
> Kind regards,