Firefox 51 to Ship with Built-In Support for FLAC Audio Codec

Mozilla engineers are working on integrating FLAC support into Firefox, which, according to current estimations, will be available starting with the stable version of Firefox 51, set to be released at the end of January of next year.

FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, and it is an open source lossless compression audio codec. FLAC is notorious among music lovers because it allows them to listen to original audio data, but at a fraction of the file's size, even if FLAC files are many times over regular MP3 documents.

Firefox is first major browser to support FLAC

According to a thread on Mozilla's Bugzilla issue tracker, the Foundation's engineers have already started work on embedding FLAC support in the main Firefox codebase.

While FLAC is supported in a few smaller browsers that not many have heard about, Firefox will be the first from the Big Five (Chrome, Firefox, IE/Edge, Safari, Opera) to officially support it.

Currently, only music streaming services such as Soundcloud, Tidal and chiru.no provide FLAC versions of their audio files to users, but only in the cases where devices and the users' software allow them to play such files.

When accessing these services via a regular browser, users are usually asked to download the FLAC file, or open it using a software program installed on the device.

FLAC support is already available in Firefox Nightly edition

After Mozilla integrates FLAC in Firefox, FLAC files will play automatically inside the browser, just like regular MP3, WAV, and other audio files do. You can test FLAC support in Firefox via the browser maker's Firefox Nightly editions.

With Internet speeds going up around the globe, or at least in the developed countries where most music consumers are based, FLAC will eventually replace MP3 and provide better quality audio to users.

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>FLAC will eventually replace MP3 and provide better quality audio to users.

Glorious times are ahead.

>implying anyone except couple of "audiophile streaming websites" will waste bandwidth on flac while half of the world listens to music on $10 earbuds

one more thing
also, bandwidth isn't the only issue. big servers like youtube or facebook have to save every kilobyte per media file because they process billions of those daily. they won't waste precious bytes per second on pretty-okay audio while video/image quality is as poor as it is now.

You wouldn't have a choice when everything is FLAC by default. The Internet is shifting into a lossless format, no longer will it be the lossy repository it was before. Firefox will be the center of this.

Which is why they use a sane format already and FLAC will never see the light of day on mainstream sites.

Nice dream.

Sweet Jesus!

Windows and Firefox already supports FLAC, as do every mainstream portable player. The shift to FLAC is real. Forget opus, vorbis, and all of the other meme formats. MP3 will finally die in your lifetime and its successor will be FLAC.

Wow mozilla thanks for making firefox do something I already had local software for instead of improving the actual browser

THIS IS WHAT WRAPPER TYPE PLUGINS ARE FOR

FUCK

>HURR BUT NORMIE CANT INSTALL PLUGIN WITHOUT VIRUS DURRR WE FUCK YOU OVER TO KEEP NORMIE SAFE

>wasting massive amounts of resources for minimal benefits

So the internet is america now? Can I run windows on a pickup truck?

The internet will be a FLAC and png-only place. No need for generational loss, this isn't the VHS era.

The Internet has not yet learned how to be lossless. And I think Mozilla is going to be part of the throes of that transformation, which must take place.

It is not going to be the lossy place that it once was in the last decade. FLAC and png are going to be at the center of that. It’s a huge transformation for the Internet to make. The Internet is now going into a lossless mode, and mp3fags will be resented because of our leading role.

But without that leading role, and without that transformation, the Internet will not survive

without normies, we would still have single-core cpus with external FPU coprocessors

cartering to normies is requirement for any technology to become widely accepted

Firefox will take back the Internet thanks to FLAC.

Firefox and Chrome have built-in antivirus that scans the files you download though.

.gif is also a lossless format, fortunately

The move to FLAC will encourage the Internet service providers to increase their infrastructure in your lifetime. It may be after you die even, but the Internet will provide content without generational loss and improve their infrastructure around the world.

Sites will offer lossy versions as a fallback to slow connections, or ISPs can do what some obscure dialup Russian ISP did: recompress files to its users in real-time. (Obviously won't work if https-only)

Any incentive for the Internet to be higher quality/end generational loss and for ISPs to beef up their interbutts is a step forward for the information super highway.

I think people are treating FLAC like a red herring. FLAC uses much less bandwidth than Youtube. It's around 150KB/s for flac, while 720p/1080p Youtube vids can be around 1MB/s especially if it's 60fps.

The problem isn't with audio, it's with bloated webpages like Twitter that take forever to load a 140 character string on its web client, pages that flood you with external javascript files, useless images everywhere, and .htmls full of obfuscated garbage that exceed the retail version of Doom.

YouTube videos have good quality, but they're huge videos that you only watch once and forget. The content itself is bullshit if you're the average person watching the average dumb video, and they're using up maybe 5-10GB a day ruining their brains with PewDiePie and Let's Plays.

Lossless music should be given such an allowance.

Archiving data now is probably more important than ever. It would be a shame if the Internet undergoes major upgrades (fibre worldwide) only to discover that good music is lossy and only modern crap is lossless. Files becoming increasingly rare is a problem, and private trackers won't be around forever.

Storage will also get better, 8TB drives can be had for $250 nowadays and people will have more and more storage, even the average person will have lots of storage on their phone. Cloud bullshit is a last-ditch denial effort by tech companies to convince people that both storage and the Internet won't eventually evolve.

Right now I think the most important thing is to bring back filesharing. Make torrents, make FTPs available to friends, burn discs, whatever. Don't let clouds like YouTube dictate content.

...

>tfw we're breaking free from the VHS era of generational loss

lol flac

...

touch fluffy tail

anime fags yet again lead the technological front in standards adoption

This thread is super interesting.

It's funny cause it's true, weeb sites use webm a lot while normie sites still use gif. Fucking gif.

The large breasts and foxgirls make it extra sophisticated

Firefox and Chrome are still the only browsers that support ogg and webm.

>yet mp3 and mp4 are fine

Just.

So Apple is holding everyone back.

It's funny that there's Edge shilling on Sup Forums, maybe they should first make sure their browser works on the place they're advertising it.

Why would it take so long to add flac support? It's not like they have to write the codec.

They have to sit around in bugzilla twiddling their thumbs in denial about a bug report until enough comments and media attention force them to fix it.

I thought phones were going to save us from this shit.

I want to bury my face in warm fluffy tail and take a big deep breath

...

I'm from a first world country with great internet and plenty of storage, but even I can see that using 5+ times the storage and bandwidth for very marginal gains is retarded.
It's not going to happen.

People said .webm is too big and it'll never happen.

Millions of people watching 220MB 5 minute cat videos from Youtube are fine but a 40MB 7 minute song is out of the question?

>Proprietary formats like MP3 will soon be a thing in the past and open formats like FLAC, ogg, WebM, and mkv will reign supreme
I want to live on this planet some more to see this glorious future

lossycucks BTFO

>open formats like FLAC, ogg, WebM, and mkv
I see one (1) audio format and 3 containers. Perhaps you meant FLAC, Vorbis, Opus, VP8 and VP9?

FLAC is also a container. Perhaps you meant "raw FLAC"?

THANK YOU BASED MOZILLA

FLAC MASTER RACE

format =/= codec

...

>flac
>the internet
We all know that this will make little difference to the availability of lossless audio online.

There is a time and a place for lossless audio. Internet streaming hardly fits the bill. Its the same as every retard that wants 23mpx photos uploaded as a 70MiB TIFF file.

If it was maybe like: "Google Play or Apple is gonna sell FLACs" maybe I'd pay attention. But this just seems like a waste of resources for literally nothing.

Then it's your job to upload flac and link it. Simple as that.

The market will decide that. Soundcloud offers flac, and it becomes more popular as a result.

...

>you fell for the flac meme

But muh rotational velocidensity

The flac meme will be Internet-wide. Wait until Dr Dre or some other celebrity endorses flac, normies will switch en-masse to the master race.

This is pointless. You can just use a file compression with a high bit rate and audiophiles wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

I think Apple uses a proprietary version of FLAC.

>caring about compromised buggy slow old shitty firefox when brave browser is better in every way

That's an even bigger waste of space, might as well go FLAC and ditch the proprietary MP3 shit

>implying that mp3 is the only alternative

>meme codecs
>widespread usage

ALAC is open sores

The Vorbis format is supported in Firefox, Chrome, and Opera already.

And yet everything is still mp3. Hell, there's more audio webm posted than ogg

then why can't ffmpeg encode it

it can

Webm audio IS Vorbis

And that's the only use case for vorbis. It's ironic that ogg isn't even its most popular container.

That's even if normalfags start adopting webm over gifv/mp4.

Bloaty McBloatface

Not for sales.
It exists as an optional feature for ripping CDs in itunes.

I can't see this going very far.
I mean, Digital Radio is popular locally, and its like 32kbps AAC+. Sounds worse than that though, somehow.

I'm fuckin loving this thread

touch fluffy tail

Firefox, I install dat

gonna install my dick into holo's foxhole

Why couldn't you just compress the file after it was made loseless? You would uncompress it in memory and still have the loseless version.

...

That's exactly what lossless compression already is. Even lossy compression decodes to a lossless format.

...

>implying flac isn't meme as well

...

Good for them, it seems like Firefox development is back on track after it felt like it was going nowhere for the past few years. Mozilla is back guise!

FLAC is rapidly emerging from its meme status, that's why this is big news.

OK my boss is wondering what the FUCK is on my computer.
How am I supposed to explain this to him!????!!?!!?!?!!?!

...

Stop bothering your boss and let him fap.

It's Firefox.

Youtube defaults to Webm using Vorbis as the audio format.

Also, arguing about use cases is dumb because FLAC is meant to be converted to other formats and Firefox is not an audio editor. Lossy formats are what 99% of people need including audiophiles who want perfect sounding music but doesn't convert it to different formats.

Youtube uses mp4 in the majority of its browsers, not webm.

Edge, Safari and every iPhone doesn't even support webm.

>Youtube defaults to Webm using Vorbis as the audio format.

No it doesn't, what the fuck? Youtube uses mp4.

>FLAC is meant to be converted to other formats

Not anymore. FLAC is making its next move in ensuring the Internet as a lossless place. Lossy formats, as is VHS, is a thing of the past.

I want to fuck Chizuru.

FLAC still has the big issue of being too big compared to other lossy formats. Once it gets smaller then it may completely replace mp3.

STOP IT YOU FUCKING FAGGOT I'M STILL AT WORK AND OBVIOUSLY I CAN'T JACK OFF JUST FUCKING DIE ALREADY

Bandwidth gets faster, storage gets larger. This isn't 2004 anymore, user. Everyone has 1TB at the very least.

If you can't afford the storage, then you can just stream FLAC. Simple as that.

I don't have internet access wherever I go nor do I really want to pay for expensive, monthly streaming services.

No, storage still is expensive. Streaming services are becoming more accessible but they're still not quite there yet.

chiru.no is free.

You can get a 8TB drive for around $200

newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178748

The time for FLAC is now.

May the FLAC be with you

Webm is the default unless your browser doesn't support it. Then it falls back to mp4. In terms of browser market share, more than 50% of people who watch videos on youtube are seeing the webm version.

Also I made a mistake. Opus replaced Vorbis.

There's more Edge, Safari and iPhones than Firefox users.

A ton of people only have shitty carriers for Internet access and use only a smartphone. That's pretty much Asia/Africa.