AMR and FLAC explained
AMR is a narrowband speech codec designed for mobile phone calls. It is optimised specifically for the frequency range of the human voice and sounds poor for anything else.
FLAC compresses audio losslessly, typically to about half the size of WAV. Decompressed, it is bit-for-bit identical to the original — the compression is mathematical, not perceptual.
- Where AMR files come from
- Voice memos and voicemail from older phones.
- Where FLAC is used
- Hi-fi music libraries and archival rips of physical media.