Best FLAC player for mac (2020) Discussion. Posted by 4 months ago. Best FLAC player for mac (2020) Discussion. Hi, I saw there were some posts about this from a couple years ago, so I figured I would ask again to see if there's anything new. What are people using lately to play FLAC files on mac? Tomahawk is one of the best players that support all three platforms, of course, Mac. Pi Music Player. I am personally using Pi Music Player on my Android phone, and this is one of the. Which is the Best FLAC player for Mac? Strictly objective speak would define the best FLAC player on Mac as the one that works for you! There simply isn’t a solution that fits every single criteria a user would need or want. However, there are a few players with support for FLAC on Mac that try to shoot for such highly-regarded recognition.
Music entertainment has been continuously evolving in the recent years. As the audio encoding technology keeps developing, the MP3 format is not enough for people who want to have ultimate music enjoyment. To get a better audio playback performance, more and more people would choose the FLAC format for their music and audio files. However, although the FLAC format can provide us a better audio quality, the compatibility of the format has always been a problem for users. So in today’s article, we will take a look at some of the best music players with FLAC support in 2020.
Part 1: Best Music Players with FLAC Support
SanDisk Clip Sport Series
If you want to have a well-designed, light-weighted and sound-quality-oriented music player, then the SanDisk Clip Sport Series might be a good option for you. SanDisk is an American manufacturer of flash memory products, including memory cards and readers, USB flash drives, and solid-state drives. It was established in 1988 and added the native FLAC support to their MP3 player as early as in 2009. SanDisk Clip Sport currently has 4GB and 8GB capacity available and with up to 5 color options as well. And the most important, with FLAC support and other audio formats like MP3, WMA (NO DRM), AAC, Ogg Vorbis, WAV and Audible (DRM only). Price starts from $39.99 for 4GB model. SanDisk Clip Sport Plus is the advanced version of SanDisk Clip Sport and with the max capacity up to 16GB plus FLAC support as well as other audio formats mentioned above.
Selling Points:
Multiple colors available Great storage ability by the SanDisk’s technology Various capacity options
Cowon PLENUE 2 and Cowon PLENUE M2 from JetAudio
JetAudio provides great FLAC portable player twins just like SanDisk. Cowon PLENUE 2 and Cowon PLENUE M2 provide high definition sound quality and evolution beyond your imagination. These are high-everything FLAC portable players with 24bit/192kHz high definition sound, highest performance Burr-Brown PCM1795DAC, high performance amplifier and high speed 128GB internal memory. Not mention the powerful support of FLAC and other popular audio formats like DXD/DSD(DFF, DSF), FLAC, WAV, AIFF, ALAC, APE, MP3, WMA, OGG, WV,TTA, DCF etc. COWON Plenue M2 32GB Black currently is selling for $134.99. Price is obviously higher than SanDisk but with bigger and better screen, bigger capacity, excellent FLAC support and industry-like outfit design.
Selling Points:
High audio definition support Multiple high-quality audio formats support Big capacity up to 128GB available.
Onkyo DP-X1A
Onkyo DP-X1A is a powerful portable music player with a variety of audio formats support. The player is built with a full version of Android 5.1, and has complete support for features like Wi-Fi connectivity and the Google Play Store. Onkyo DP-X1A has two audio ports – one headphone jack and one balanced output for those interested in a cleaner and overall better-quality sound. Additionally, the device has an easy-to-use volume wheel, as well as physical playback buttons and two microSD card slots for those with a sizable collection of music. Overall, the Onkyo is a great and professional choice for all of your high-quality FLAC music files.
Selling Points:
Professional design with a convenient volume wheel Two microSD card slots Easy-to-use Android operating system
Best Mkv Player For Mac
iPod Touch
iPod Touch is definitely the go-to option for Apple users. As a member in the iOS ecosystem, iPod Touch can cooperate perfectly with your other Apple devices like iPhone, iPad or Mac computer. With the ability to store up to 128 gigabytes of your favorite tunes, plus smartphone-like functionality including Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity and access to the Apple App Store, there is no better iPod for casual listeners and those who don’t want to carry a smartphone or drain its battery. Although iPod Touch is designed for casual listeners and doesn’t provide many advanced audios playback support, the device is still recommended for your FLAC audio files as it’s smart, easy-to-use and light-weighted.
Selling Points:
User-friendly iOS operating system Great entertainment extendibility Great portability
Sony NW-A45 Walkman
As a professional music player, Sony NW-A45 Walkman is packed with 16GB of built-in storage and a slick touchscreen UI. The product comes in multiple colors that will definitely suit your taste. For audiophiles, the NW-A45 supports Hi-Res playback, plus DSEE H can help restore lossy files back to a near lossless state. What’s more, Sony's Walkman also comes with an S-Master HX digital amp that's powerful enough to drive some relatively high-impedance headphones. With the powerful audio decoding ability, the Sony NW-A45 starts at around $149, which is reasonable for high-end portable FLAC audio player devices.
Selling Points:
Outstanding user interface Powerful HX digital amp Expandable memory card slot
Part 2: Free Flac Player Software
Although the portable FLAC player devices introduced above can player your FLAC audio files quite efficiently, they also have their own unique drawbacks. Some of them are too expensive, others are not powerful in certain functions. So in addition to the players in the above, there is one more product that can play all FLAC audio files perfectly for free: Leawo Blu-ray Player.
Best Flac Player For Android
As one of the best media players that works on both Windows and Mac operating system, Leawo Blu-ray Player is the first choice for a lot of professional users to play FLAC files as well as more than 180+ other audio and video files because with the powerful decoding technology. The 100% free media player can play almost every digital video format. In addition, the player application can also play Blu-ray/DVD across region, and open all kinds of DVD materials in form of disc, ISO image or folder. In the premium version of Leawo Blu-ray Player, you can even convert your Blu-ray or DVD to a lossless digital MKV video, which is very convenient for Blu-ray or DVD lovers.
In terms of the audio playback ability, Leawo Blu-ray Player supports not only the MP3 and FLAC format, but also most of the popular high-quality audio formats like AAC, AC3, APE, DTS, M4A, MID, MKA, MP2, MPA, OGG and many more. The audio playback quality that Leawo Blu-ray Player can provide is also excellent. Here are the main features you can expect from this free media player application.
Why to Choose Leawo Blu-ray Player
Perfect playback for high quality media files User-oriented playback control Stereo Audio Enjoyment Complete Dolby, DTS, AAC, TrueHD, DTS-HD (including 5.1, 7.1 channels) support Full lossless-format support
Part 3: FLAC Introduction and FLAC&MP3 Comparison
FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, as what it indicates, lossless is the most important feature of FLAC. FLAC file is a file which contains audio samples compressed with the FLAC audio encoding algorithm, which is a very good, open-source, lossless, audio codec.
As one of the popular and lossless audio formats, FLAC is always used to compare with another very common audio format in use, which is MP3. So, let’s have a closer look at these two audio formats from different aspects.
The biggest difference: FLAC is lossless while MP3 is lossy. Lossless audio formats keep all the audio quality of the original source while lossy one compresses the files for space savings; therefore, the sound quality will be slightly affected in this case.
Since FLAC is lossless as mentioned above, which keeps all the audio quality of the original source and makes FLAC the ideal audio format to store your music in lossless style. On the contrary, MP3 is a lossy but common audio format around. It’s well-supported by a lot of music download sites and portable devices, MP3 is definitely No.1 for the audiences if people are talking about the music thing.
Bonus: How to Play FLAC Music on My Phone
Besides playing the FLAC music with a professional music player or with a free player application on PC, there are still a lot of people would love to have a third option, which is to play the music on their smartphones. However, not all smart phones can directly play FLAC music. In order to make your FLAC music playable on your phone, you need to either install a player app that is compatible with the FLAC format, or convert the FLAC audio file to MP3 before transferring it to your phone.
You can find some FLAC compatible music player apps on both Android and iOS operating system. For Android users, you can try PowerAmp Player, which has a pretty good user interface, VLC for Android which is famous for its decoding ability, or many other options. For iOS users, the options are kind of limited. As far as I know of, VOX Music Player is one of the few that works.
If you don’t want to take time to find a proper app, or you are not willing to pay for a decent FLAC player app, converting FLAC to MP3 in advance is also a good choice. There are may great audio converter applications like Leawo Video Converter on both Windows and Mac system. By converting your FLAC audio file to MP3, you should be able to play it on your phone without any problem.
When you get some excellent audio files in FLAC, which is a free lossless audio code, you should get FLAC audio players to enjoy the audio or music in its full glory. For most the media players support MP3 files only, what should be the best FLAC player for Windows, Mac, Android phone and iPhone.
The article compiles an ultimate list about the top FLAC players for different platforms. Whether you need to listen to FLAC files on your computer, or enjoy the audio files on the go, you can always find a suitable solution from the article.
Part 1: Top 3 FLAC Players for Windows
Top 1: Free Blu-ray Player
When you need a FLAC player for all video and audio formats, Free Blu-ray Player is able to play FLAC audio and HQ videos with a high quality. Moreover, it also supports both DVDs and Blu-Ray disc.
1. Support Dolby 5.1, DTS, HD audio and the newest playing technology.
2. Play back video, audio, DVDs, Blu-Ray discs with the original quality.
3. Capture favorite snapshot when you play the video files.
4. Different screen modes like full, half, normal, double and more others.
Top 2: Audacious
Audacious is a simple and advanced FLAC audio player available for Windows and Linux. It contains some excellent tools, plugins, stream and more other features within an intuitive user interface.
1. Save computer resources to play the FLAC files within the original quality.
2. Create and edit your own playlist for a large collection of FLAC files.
3. Tweak the sound with the graphic equalizer or experiment with effects.
4. Advanced plugins to fetch lyrics for music, set alarms in the morning, etc.
Top 3: Foobar2000
Similar to the other FLAC media player for Windows, you can play FLAC, MP3, CD audio, WavPack, and more other audio and video formats with Foobar2000. The latest version also updated with the latest UPnP playback code to listen to files from other devices.
1. Full replaygain support and gapless playback during the audio playback.
2. Advanced tagging capabilities to resume the playback with ease.
3. Support for ripping Audio CDs and transcoding all supported audio formats.
4. Easy to customize the user interface layout and keyboard shortcuts.
Part 2: 3 Best FLAC Players for Mac
Top 1: VOX Player
VOX Player is a professional FLAC player for Mac to deliver Hi-Res audio files. Just listen to the favorites artists without audio losses and pure sound. It is an absolutely free for public audio player that anyone can enjoy the FLAC with a high quality.
Best Flac Player For Mac
1. Conserve and playback all converted files in its original quality.
2. Integration with a number of other online streaming sites for music.
3. Access to more than 30000 different stations with the built-in radio app.
4. Unlimited cloud storage to play the FLAC audio from Mac, iPhone, etc.
Top 2: VLC Media Player
As a versatile media player, VLC Media Player support the lossless FLAC natively. It is a useful tool that works with Windows, Mac, Android and iOS. It should be a nice FLAC player if you need to process multiple videos an audios, including FLAC format.
1. Extract the FLAC audio from video files, or convert audio files to FLAC.
2. Stream the FLAC files and other audio and video file over the Internet.
3. Record the audio files of your computer to FLAC files or video formats.
4. Remote control playback the video and audio files from a browser.
Top 3: AIMP
AIMP is another free FLAC player for Windows. Besides the crystal clear sound for FLAC, you can also access to a large number of file formats and playlists. It enables you to play files within a queue.
1. Get the minimal consumption to a maximum of functionality.
2. Sensitive equalizer and other flexible options of the program.
3. Expand opportunities of the FLAC player with advanced plug-ins.
4. All creation of bookmarks and has a playback queue of the audio files.
Part 3: Top 2 FLAC Players for Android Phones
Top 1: Pi Music Player
Pi Music Player is one of the best FLAC players for Android to fulfill all the musical needs. You can easily browse through all your music files with the enhance folder view in the audio player. Moreover, Pi Power Share enables you share FLAC via different platforms.
1. 5 built-in band equalizers with bass boost, 3D reverb effects, virtual, etc.
2. 25 amazing backgrounds for gloss theme with in-app purchases.
3. Ringtone cutter to precisely cut any MP3 to make default Ringtone.
4. The most minimalist and great FLAC player to watch FLAC audio files.
Top 2: PowerAmp Player
Audio Players For Mac
PowerAmp Player is a powerful FLAC audio player for Android works with most of the audio formats, and even some video formats. It includes crossfade, gapless, replay gain, Chrome-cast support, dynamic queue and even play songs from the folders/own library.
1. 10-band optimized graphical equalizers for all file formats and presets.
2. Unique Direct Volume Control for extended dynamic range and deep bass.
3. Multiple widgets with many selectable styles, advanced customizations.
4. Headset support, automatic Resume on headset and/or BT connection.
Part 4: 2 Best FLAC Players for iPhone
Top 1: Golden Ear
As the name of the FLAC player for iPhone, Golden Ear is able to play most of the lossless audio formats, such as FLAC, APE, WAV, WavPack, AIFF and ALAC. It has a rich set of playlist themes to enjoy the FLAC audio files according to different requirements.
1. Play supported lossless audio formats up to 24bit/96KHz with a high quality.
2. Support both CUE files and LRC files with recommended UTF8 encoding.
3. Multiple editing tools to create, rename, delete folder and loop songs.
4. Recognize embedded cover art and comment tag inside FLAC files.
Top 2: Tonido
Tonido is the personal cloud with live streaming access to all your data and media. The FLAC player for iPhone allows you to access the entire collection of music, movies, photos, and documents you have stored. You can also download FLAC videos with the program.
1. Stream your entire music collection in FLAC, OGG, WMA and more audios.
2. Wirelessly download files directly to iOS device and access them offline.
3. Create and manage music playlists for your music on iPhone.
4. Remote access the FLAC files for different devices.
Part 5. FAQs of Playing FLAC with Free FLAC Player
1. Is FLAC the best audio format?
FLAC is the abbreviation for Free Lossless Audio Codec. It is a popular lossless format. The audio quality is higher and better than other audio formats like WAV and AIFF.
2. Can VLC play FLAC files?
Yes, VLC Media Player is an open source media player that supports playing FLAC files. Just open VLC Media Player and click 'Media' to 'Open File' to import FLAC file for playback.
3. Is FLAC better than MP3?
Best Free Flac Player For Mac
FLAC file is a lossless audio format. Well, MP3 is a lossy format. So, FLAC is better than MP3 technically in terms of quality. But FLAC files are up to around 6 times larger than MP3. When the two file formats stay the same quality, the size of MP3 file is smaller than that of FLAC.
Conclusion
Best Mkv Player For Mac Os X
What are the best FLAC players on different platforms? If you want to enjoy the lossless audio formats, you can find the 10 best FLAC players on Windows, Mac, Android phone and iPhone. Whether you need to manage a playlist, download FLAC files, remote access from another device, or further edit the audio files, you can always get a desired program from the article. If you have any query about the best FLAC player, you can share more detailed information in the comments.