One of the cool new things that we added to Podcast Spot in our January update is the ability to upload a FLAC file. FLAC stands for "Free Lossless Audio Codec" - it's a codec (a way of storing audio information in a digital file) developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation. Wikipedia has a good explanation of why FLAC is useful:

It does not remove any information from the audio stream and is suitable both for everyday playback and audio archival. The FLAC format is currently well supported by many software projects and hardware support is growing.

If you're interested in preserving the original fidelity of your audio recording, FLAC is a great option. The files won't be as small as MP3 files, but they will be lossless. Of course, certain kinds of podcasts are better suited to recording in FLAC than others. For example, you probably wouldn't record a voice-only podcast with FLAC, but if you are recording music, it might be worth it.

FLAC is nowhere near as popular as MP3 or other audio formats, of course, and that's where Podcast Spot comes in. You can record your episodes using FLAC, upload them to Podcast Spot, and like all other files, we'll convert them to MP3, WMA, and OGG Vorbis. You get the best of both worlds - the lossless, high quality recording of FLAC, and the ability to offer your listeners an option they can surely play.

One of our goals with Podcast Spot is to free podcasters from worrying about the details - we want you to focus on creating great content, using whatever is easiest or best for you. Supporting FLAC files for upload is just another small way for us to do that.

Happy Lossless Podcasting!