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FLAC Detective — lossy transcodes hiding inside lossless files: MP3, AAC, Vorbis, Opus

🎵 FLAC Detective

A lossy file renamed to .flac looks lossless, weighs lossless, and fools every player you own. It can't fool the arithmetic the encoder left behind — and this reads it for you.

MP3, AAC, Vorbis and — partially — Opus, through three independent kinds of evidence. A conviction needs two of them to agree.

PyPI version PyPI Downloads CI Docs License: MIT

Find the fake FLACs in your music library.

A lossy codec throws away the top of the spectrum and never gives it back. FLAC Detective reads each file, spots the fingerprints that loss leaves behind, and tells you which files are real and which are fakes.

pip install flac-detective       # needs Python 3.10+
flac-detective /path/to/music    # scan a file or a whole folder

Every file gets a verdict, like a traffic light:

✅ AUTHENTIC      real lossless         → keep it
❓ WARNING        borderline            → give it a listen
⚠️  SUSPICIOUS     probably a transcode  → likely a fake
❌ FAKE_CERTAIN   definitely a fake     → replace it

The scan only reads your files — it never changes anything.

🟢 New to all this? → Start Here — the 5-minute beginner's guide No command line, no jargon. From "what is this?" to "I checked my music".


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Licensed under the MIT License.

Release files for flac-detective 1.16.0

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Source distribution for flac-detective 1.16.0
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Table of built distributions (wheels) for flac-detective 1.16.0
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flac_detective-1.16.0-py3-none-any.whl Python 3 none any Details

Total release size: 31.4 MB

Release files / flac_detective-1.16.0.tar.gz

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Release files / flac_detective-1.16.0-py3-none-any.whl

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1.17.0

2 release files

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1.16.0 This release

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1.15.0

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1.14.1

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1.13.0

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1.12.0

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