The FLAC format is wildly popular among audiophiles for its ability to conjugate lossless compression to a relatively small memory footprint. The format has seen an update to version 1.3.2 at the beginning of January, the first after more than two years; the update improves compression among other things.
FLAC 1.3.1 was released in November 2014, but if you expected the two-year development to bring astounding changes, you’ll be disappointed. There are in fact various changes, mostly related to in-depth matters such as compiler support (Clang) or SSE2 instructions support by OSes, but not many user-visible differences.
The only two differences worth mentioning are the addition of FLAC in MP4 specification and an improvement in compression of files, mainly when dealing with classical music. This may be good for those with very large classical music libraries, who are likely the only ones who will see a noticeable difference. There is also an improvement in encoding speed when FLAC libraries are used on older Intel CPUs.
While nothing major has been announced with this revision, FLAC continues on its path as it maintains its leadership in lossless audio formats. You can read the full changelog here.
