Recording to FLAC File Format with 7-Series Recorders

FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is a lossless data compression format available as a file format on 702, 702T, 722, and 744T recorders. The FLAC algorithm is very processor intensive, and subsequently has several limitations.

  1. Records to one media at a time. This is the same limitation as when recording MP2 and MP3 files.
  2. With 4-track recordings, 48 kHz is the highest available sampling rate.
  3. With 2-track recordings, 96 kHz is the highest available sampling rate.
  4. Recording 24-bit/48 kHz/4-track/mono to an external DVD-RAM drive is not recommended, though this file format will record reliably to an external hard drive. If recording to an external DVD-RAM reduce the track count, reduce the bit depth or sampling rate, or use polyphonic files instead of monophonic files.
  5. Notes are disabled, all other metadata is stored.
  6. Auto file header saving does not apply to FLAC files, if power is lost while recording the file may be invalid.

Sound Devices offers Wave Agent Classic, a free Windows based software used to extract FLAC to WAV files as well as combining monophonic and splitting polyphonic files.