Lossless Audio (La) 0.4b

As a result, the compressed files produce the same sound as the original ones. This application reduces the size of files by 50% (or even more for classical music).

The main features of Lossless Audio include:

the Windows frontend which supports many other codecs as well; having versions for both Windows and Linux; supporting Winamp, foobar2000 and Xmms plugins for playback and offering one of the best compression rates for its time (Lossless Audio has not been updated anymore since 2004).

The compression rate provided by Lossless Audio ranges between 20% and 70% of the original. This ratio is not as satisfactory as in MP3 files, but the sound quality is unaltered. Another advantage offered by this codec are running at around 2.5x real time in default mode.

The last version of Lossless Audio was 0.4b and it featured the following changes: the core compression engine was separated into .dll, several bug fixes have been made and the source for plugins and the console program were released together with API to encourage independent development.

Furthermore, the last version of Lossless Audio required Microsoft .NET Framework, which is included with Windows XP. An alternative to the .NET Framework is La frontend 1.2, a frontend for the La console application. Errors when trying to run the frontend may be solved by getting the Visual Basic 6 Runtime files or the mscomctl.ocx.

Lossless Audio is outdated, since it has not been developed anymore since 2004. It offered great performance for the time when it was released and it may still please a limited number of users.