Implementations

FLAC playback hard- and software

For a (non-exhaustive) list of playback hardware and software tested against this set of FLAC test files see this page at the Hydrogenaud.io wiki.

FLAC decoding libraries

Name	Programming language	License	Container support	Remarks
libFLAC	C and C++	3-clause BSD	FLAC, OGG	Reference implementation
libavcodec	C	LGPL	FLAC, OGG, MKV, MP4
dr_flac	C	public domain or MIT no attribution	FLAC, OGG, MP4	Header-only library
libfoxenflac	C	AGPL 3.0	FLAC	Focus on low resource usage, embedded use
flac	Go	Unlicense	FLAC
FLAC-library-Java	Java	GPL 3.0	FLAC
Claxon	Rust	Apache 2.0	FLAC, OGG, MP4	No seeking support
Symphonia	Rust	MPL 2.0	FLAC, OGG, MKV, MP4

FLAC decoding library wrappers and language bindings

This is a non-exhaustive list of wrappers available for the libraries listed in the previous section.

Name	Wraps	Programming language	License	Remarks
libsndfile	libFLAC	C	LGPL
avcpp	libavcodec	C++	LGPL or BSD
ExoPlayer	libFLAC	Java (Android)	Apache 2.0
libflacjs	libFLAC	Javascript/WASM	MIT
PyAV	libavcodec	Python	3-clause BSD
pyFLAC	libFLAC	Python	Apache 2.0
pysndfile	libFLAC	Python	LGPL

FLAC analysis tools

• flac, tool usually bundled with libFLAC to encode from and decode to uncompressed file formats like WAV and AIFF. It also has an analysis mode to represent a FLAC file in human-readable form
• metaflac, tool usually bundled with libFLAC to view and modify the file-level metadata of FLAC files
• fq, tool to help analyse a FLAC file (among other file formats) by representing it in human-readable form
• flac.tcl, tool that decodes a FLAC file with a very verbose human-readable analysis of it