Apple Lossless, also known as
Apple Lossless Audio Codec (
ALAC), or
Apple Lossless Encoder (
ALE), is an
audio coding format, and its reference
audio codec implementation, developed by
Apple Inc. for
lossless data compression of digital
music. After initially keeping it
proprietary from its inception in 2004, in late 2011 Apple made the codec available
open source and
royalty-free. Traditionally, Apple has referred to the codec as
Apple Lossless, though more recently they have begun to use the abbreviated term
ALAC when referring to the codec.