New version 1.4 of FLAC released nearly a decade ago: with AArch64 optimization and faster x86x64 FMA

Thanks to CTOnews.com netizens Wu Yanzu in South China for the delivery of clues! CTOnews.com Sept. 12, Multimedia FLAC 1.4 "Free Lossless Audio Codec" has recently been released. FLAC is known for its excellent, free digital audio lossless compression technology.

It has been nearly a decade since the release of FLAC 1.3 (May 2013), and now the FLAC 1.4 series is the latest release. In FLAC 1.4, performance optimization is made for ARMv8 (AArch64) hardware with NEON instructions. From Apple M1 / M2 to Ampere Altra and a variety of other hardware, AArch64 performance will be better.

In terms of x86 instructions 64, FLAC 1.4 brings acceleration to Intel / AMD processors that support FMA instructions.

CTOnews.com learned that other work in FLAC 1.4 includes encoding / decoding 32-bit PCM, encoding files with sample rates up to 1048575Hz, coding preset improvements, FLAC format documents have been rewritten, CMake build system improvements, and a wide range of other additions and fixes.

Users can download and learn more details about the FLAC 1.4 update at GitHub.