Flac – the best audio format?
Everyone has probably heard of the FLAC music format and its advantages over traditional MP3. However, not everyone was able to personally test the FLAC format, and some iPhone and iPad users were of the wrong opinion that it is impossible to listen to music in the highest quality on Apple mobile devices.
In this guide, we will tell you how to listen to music in FLAC format on iPhone and iPad, as well as what other lossless audio formats are.
First, a little theory. FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is one of the lossless audio data compression methods. Using the FLAC method and its analogues (discussed below), encoded data can be retrieved with bit precision, thus improving the sound quality of music. Increasing quality, in fact, is the main reason people think of starting to listen to lossless audio (lossless compressed audio).
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There are a large number of lossless audio compression methods: FLAC, WavPack, Monkey’s, ALAC, OptimFROG, WMA lossless, and others. There are many differences between most of them: they differ in different encoding and decoding speeds, labeling methods, multi-channel support, and various other parameters. For normal users, only these two parameters are really important:
Format prevalence
Format support per device
And here most of the formats fade into the background, since the first is that their support is not implemented on all devices; second, finding music in such formats is problematic. Who is left?
Two formats remain: FLAC and ALAC. They are both widely spread and have almost the same compression ratio. The main difference between them is that ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) is a codec developed by Apple and consequently compatible with all Apple devices, while standard iPhone, iPad and Mac players do not recognize FLAC.
However, you can listen to music in FLAC format on iPhone and iPad, however you need a special application for this. There are many applications in the App Store that allow you to listen to music in FLAC format on the iPhone and iPad, but among the variety there are many frankly bad applications, either uncomfortable to use or constantly crashing. After examining a dozen of these apps, we chose three: VLC for mobile devices (free), FLAC Player + (free), and Amazing Quality Equalizer (379 rubles). Let’s take a look at the process of downloading FLAC music to iPhone or iPad using the VLC for Mobile app, which seems to be the easiest to use.
How to listen to FLAC music on iPhone and iPad
Step 1. Install the VLC for Mobile application on your iPhone or iPad
Step 2. Launch VLC for mobile devices and go to settings
Step 3. Activate the switch “Access via Wi-Fi”
Step 4. Open the address provided by the application (such as 192.168.1.x) in your PC or Mac browser
Step 5. Transfer the FLAC music you want to download to your mobile device in the browser window and wait for the download to finish.
That’s all! Now you can listen to FLAC music on your iPhone or iPad using VLC for Mobile player.
Now for the ALAC format. You can sync music in this format with your mobile device through iTunes in the most common way. Also, you can transcode FLAC music to ALAC format. The quality will suffer a bit and it will take a long time, but if you can’t find the desired album or song in ALAC format, then there is no other way out.
FLAC audio files on Mac
Every computer user has come across an audio file in FLAC format (* .flac) at least once in their life. Perhaps it was downloaded from somewhere on the Internet or received a link in the mail to an audio file in this format. In one way or another, more than once you have had the urge to open this file and play it. As a general rule, using the basic tools of the operating system, all attempts to reproduce these files are unsuccessful. There are several options for playing FLAC audio format on Mac, however iTunes music player (like QuickTime player) is not one of them.
What is FLAC audio?
For those unfamiliar with this audio format, FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is a lossless audio compression format. Free Lossless Audio Codec is a compression standard originally developed by the non-profit foundation Xiph.org that supports digital audio files that are acoustically identical to the original material. FLAC-encoded files use the open source (open source) model.
