Sample FLAC Files — Download Lossless Test Audio
Free Lossless Audio Codec · .flac · MIME type audio/flac
Download a sample FLAC file — lossless compressed audio that decodes bit-for-bit to the original PCM at about 50–60% of WAV size. FLAC is the archival and hi-fi standard, supported natively by every major browser since 2017, by Android, and (since iOS 11) by Apple devices.
Use these files to verify lossless round trips: decode the FLAC to WAV, and the samples should match our 44.1 kHz WAV of the same length exactly.
Download sample FLAC files
| File | Details | Size | Download |
|---|---|---|---|
sample-audio-10s.flac | 10 s · FLAC · 278 kbps · 44.1 kHz · stereo | 348 KB | |
sample-audio-30s.flac | 30 s · FLAC · 281 kbps · 44.1 kHz · stereo | 1.1 MB |
Need one of every audio format? Download the audio sample pack (1.7 MB, one small file of every audio format (9 files)).
Use these files from the command line or CI
Every URL is stable and CORS-open. Pin the SHA-256 in your test and you will know the moment a fixture changes.
# Download one file curl -O https://pnb-website-bucket.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/samples/audio/flac/sample-audio-10s.flac # Verify it (SHA-256 is listed for every file above) shasum -a 256 sample-audio-10s.flac # Machine-readable index of every sample file curl https://pnb-website-bucket.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/samples/index.json | jq '.files[] | select(.format=="flac")'
FLAC format at a glance
| Full name | Free Lossless Audio Codec |
|---|---|
| Extensions | .flac |
| MIME type | audio/flac |
| Introduced | Xiph.Org, 2001 |
| Compression | Lossless, typically 50–60% of PCM |
| Bit depth | Up to 32-bit; samples are 16-bit |
| Licensing | Free, no patents |
| Magic bytes | 66 4C 61 43 ("fLaC") |
What people test with sample FLAC files
- Lossless round-trip verification
- Music-library ingestion and tagging
- Bandwidth tests with medium-sized audio files
Frequently asked questions
Does FLAC lose any quality?
None. It is lossless in the same sense as ZIP: decoding returns exactly the input samples. The only trade-off is file size versus lossy formats like MP3 or AAC.
Are these FLAC files safe to download?
Yes. Every file is generated by our own open script from scratch — nothing is scraped or user-uploaded — and contains no scripts, macros or executables. The SHA-256 of each file is published on this page so you can verify what you received.
Can I use the sample FLAC files commercially?
Yes. They are free for any purpose, including commercial products, test suites, demos and redistribution, with no attribution required. There is nothing to license and no one to ask.
Can I hotlink these files or use them in CI?
Yes. Every link is a stable direct URL over HTTPS with Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * and long cache headers, so curl, wget, fetch() and test runners can pull them directly. A JSON index of every file is linked from each page (see the command-line section).
Related sample files
Testing a file pipeline? We build them.
Uploads, conversions, previews, document processing and media workflows are the kind of production systems Pine & Birch designs and runs for clients — which is why we needed these files in the first place.
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