How to Play FLAC Files in Winamp

A short guide on FLAC audio files and how to get Winamp to play FLAC files.

Published May 1, 2007 by lobo235
Last updated on Jul 3, 2007

The FLAC (free lossless audio codec) audio format is becoming more and more popular. FLAC allows you to encode a CD to a lossless format which will sound just like the original CD and will not lose any of the original audio information from the CD like the MP3 format does. FLAC files are quite a bit larger than MP3 files because they hold more audio data than an MP3 which results in better sound quality.

Up until recently if you wanted to play FLAC files in Winamp you needed a 3rd party plug-in to do so. As of Winamp 5.31 native FLAC support is included in Winamp. So, the easiest way to get FLAC support in Winamp is to install the latest version which will have native FLAC support. If, for some odd reason, you do not wish to upgrade to the latest version of Winamp then you will need to get a 3rd party plug-in that will allow you to play the FLAC files. Here are a couple links you can visit to get the plug-ins:

If you would like to learn more about the FLAC audio format here are a couple of good resources:

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