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FLAC doesnt work in any apple devices - Printable Version

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FLAC doesnt work in any apple devices - jonathan4all - 10-15-2015

I was very excited to download updated version of BASE ..2.1 which was in FLAC format. But it didn't not work in any version of Ipod. So my question is ... can I decode FLAC to apple lossless version? Will it provide same lossless quality?. FLAC seems way bigger in size compared to the normal MP3 now we are listening. So, I am assuming it will ensure better quality for subliminal standard. Audio quality is everything for us. 5 to 10% improvements due to lossless version can be game changer who knows!!

What do you guys think ? Please don't share BRO-SCIENCE, Thanks.


RE: FLAC doesnt work in any apple devices - apollolux - 10-15-2015

FLAC can be converted to ALAC with retention of the same quality, yes, assuming you leave the sample rate and bit depth intact.


RE: FLAC doesnt work in any apple devices - jonathan4all - 10-15-2015

(10-15-2015, 08:50 AM)apollolux Wrote: FLAC can be converted to ALAC with retention of the same quality, yes, assuming you leave the sample rate and bit depth intact.

How to fix that ! I am not expert in these things. I got an open source converter named Max though.


RE: FLAC doesnt work in any apple devices - apollolux - 10-15-2015

(10-15-2015, 08:53 AM)jonathan4all Wrote:
(10-15-2015, 08:50 AM)apollolux Wrote: FLAC can be converted to ALAC with retention of the same quality, yes, assuming you leave the sample rate and bit depth intact.

How to fix that ! I am not expert in these things. I got an open source converter named Max though.

If by "Max" you mean this free, open-source converter software for Mac OS X, then yes it can convert FLAC to Apple Lossless. I personally use the command-line FFmpeg to convert FLAC to ALAC because it's kept relatively up-to-date, but I'm confident Max will still run on 10.7/Lion and later. I don't personally know how to use Max but I'm confident from seeing the screenshots that it is fairly intuitive to use.

FLAC stands for "Free Lossless Audio Codec" and ALAC stands for "Apple Lossless Audio Codec." FLAC was created before Apple open-sourced ALAC, and now that ALAC is open-source any sufficiently modern/updated player should be able to support playing ALAC *.m4a files.

I listen to subs through Apple EarPods using an iPod Touch myself, though all of them have been Shannon's MP3s so far. Android's built-in music player (at least since 4.0/Ice Cream Sandwich) should also be able to play *.m4a (and likely FLAC) natively, otherwise there are plenty of free audio players on the Google Play Store that can play ALAC *.m4a and FLAC.


RE: FLAC doesnt work in any apple devices - jonathan4all - 10-15-2015

(10-15-2015, 10:35 AM)apollolux Wrote:
(10-15-2015, 08:53 AM)jonathan4all Wrote:
(10-15-2015, 08:50 AM)apollolux Wrote: FLAC can be converted to ALAC with retention of the same quality, yes, assuming you leave the sample rate and bit depth intact.

How to fix that ! I am not expert in these things. I got an open source converter named Max though.

If by "Max" you mean this free, open-source converter software for Mac OS X, then yes it can convert FLAC to Apple Lossless. I personally use the command-line FFmpeg to convert FLAC to ALAC because it's kept relatively up-to-date, but I'm confident Max will still run on 10.7/Lion and later. I don't personally know how to use Max but I'm confident from seeing the screenshots that it is fairly intuitive to use.

FLAC stands for "Free Lossless Audio Codec" and ALAC stands for "Apple Lossless Audio Codec." FLAC was created before Apple open-sourced ALAC, and now that ALAC is open-source any sufficiently modern/updated player should be able to support playing ALAC *.m4a files.

I listen to subs through Apple EarPods using an iPod Touch myself, though all of them have been Shannon's MP3s so far. Android's built-in music player (at least since 4.0/Ice Cream Sandwich) should also be able to play *.m4a (and likely FLAC) natively, otherwise there are plenty of free audio players on the Google Play Store that can play ALAC *.m4a and FLAC.

I have just converted one flac file to ALAC(ext. m4a). The original FLAC audio file is 404.1 MB whereas apple lossless is 409.3 MB. Wondering why a little difference. Aren't they supposed to be same in size since they are lossless Huh


RE: FLAC doesnt work in any apple devices - apollolux - 10-15-2015

(10-15-2015, 11:43 AM)jonathan4all Wrote: I have just converted one flac file to ALAC(ext. m4a). The original FLAC audio file is 404.1 MB whereas apple lossless is 409.3 MB. Wondering why a little difference. Aren't they supposed to be same in size since they are lossless Huh

They likely use slightly different algorithms for compression; think a replacement cipher, where one replaces the word "the" with the letter "a" while another replaces "the" with "a0" instead. FLAC offers more compression options and "features" than ALAC (which is likely why the FLAC is smaller), but usually compress audio to nearly the same size; for smaller files this difference is usually negligible (~20KB/minute or so), but since according to other posts around here BASE 2.1 is an hour long each file the difference (~5MB according to your report) becomes a bit more noticeable.


RE: FLAC doesnt work in any apple devices - AbundanceCH - 06-01-2016

You can play flac through your iphone using a bluetooth speaker if you have dropbox or another cloud storage account.

What I do is I play it by using an app called cloudbeats which lets you play audio files from your cloud storage accounts (this one lets you play flac) and just play it using a bluetooth speaker (since the iphone doesn't have stereo speakers).


RE: FLAC doesnt work in any apple devices - Shannon - 06-01-2016

I strongly recommend that you never change what I have created. Even transcoding it from a lossless format to another lossless format means you cannot know if it's changed in some unexpected way for some unexpected reason. There is no hash value, and no guarantee that you still have the same thing.

If you want to play a FLAC on an apple device, it is better to find an app that can play it instead, or just use the mp3's, than to try to transcode it.


RE: FLAC doesnt work in any apple devices - procyon98 - 06-02-2016

VLC for ios. plays flac.

I got for my android. Bluetooth speaker, but for maxim quality i hard wire the phone to the speaker via the jack.