Microsoft’s unexpectedly named operating system, Windows 10, will be able to support some very popular formats right from the get-go, unlike the previous versions. Microsoft’s Gabriel Aul recently posted a picture on Twitter in which “keen eyed” users should see “something cool”. The image shows a playlist which features a lot of Led Zeppelin songs, which is definitely cool but most likely not the point. Instead, mister Aul wants to draw our attention at the fact that all the songs are FLAC files and that Windows 10 will support this format from the get-go. FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec and is widely considered to be the format of choice for every music lover because it provides the best quality.
Keen eyed #WindowsInsiders will notice something cool about this pic. Something to look forward to in the new year! pic.twitter.com/4uQe5LlLmI
— Gabriel Aul (@GabeAul) November 25, 2014
Previous iterations of Windows did not support this format from the start, which means that users had to look for a third-party software if they wanted to enjoy it. The program of choice was usually VLC media player, although there are some other good ones out there as well. Windows 10 will make it so that we won’t need to use such programs anymore, but we’ll probably still do it anyway just out of habit, at least for a while. While FLAC should definitely be your go-to format if you want to listen to the best quality music, it has a small drawback that you might want to take into consideration. Files of this type are usually much larger than something like .mp3. You can notice this in the Windows 10 picture posted by Gabriel Aul where almost each song weights at least 100 mb and a couple are even close to 200 mb.
About a month ago, Aul announced that Windows 10 will also be able to support MKV out of the box. This format is associated with video files and is just as popular as FLAC but again, you’ll need to look for a third-party program to be able to run MKV files on previous versions of Windows.