Monday, May 16, 2011

FLAC or ALAC



I’m currently listening to “Hotel California” while typing this and it’s one of those songs that I will never get tired of hearing. I ripped it from the original CD that I purchased years ago and of course it’s in a lossless format. I can play this same exact file on my smartphone/portable music player, home theater system, and even my car stereo (auxiliary cable or Bluetooth from my smartphone/portable music player). Every single one of them is playing it in its original CD quality audio.  Now here’s my question, are you able to do all that with your FLAC version of your favorite song on the computer?
Yes, the format I currently have it in is Apple Lossless (ALAC) and I know I’m probably to receive much criticism from it. But hey, I prefer convenience and this is the best and easiest way I found to enjoy my CD quality music everywhere I go. Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) is a completely open format that allows millions to enjoy their lossless music…on their computers. Is your smartphone able to play back FLAC? What about your portable music player? Is there any simple way of playing FLAC on car stereo? What about your home theater system, without having to attach a long cable from your computer?
All Apple portable devices (iPhone, iPod) and even Android smartphones support this closed proprietary lossless codec called ALAC. The most popular MP3 player (iPod has 76 percent of the U.S. MP3 player market, Zune has 1%) also natively supports ALAC. What about listening to your digital lossless music on car stereo? Simply connect your smartphone/portable music player to your car stereo through auxiliary cable or Bluetooth. The same also applies to your home theater system.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m someone who would never want FLAC to go away. It allows me to discover thousands of timeless classics online in their original CD audio quality. I just personally don’t find much use for it beyond the computer. I always end up converting it to ALAC using dbpoweramp (if I’m on a PC) or Max (if I’m on a Mac) since I want to enjoy it in places beyond my office.
How do you enjoy your lossless CD audio quality music beyond the computer? I know there exist certain portable music players or car stereos that natively support FLAC, I just simply don’t want to go out of my way to purchase additional accessories when I could just convert it to ALAC instead. Oh and of course there exist those who just encode it all in MP3, I have nothing against that. Half of my music collection is in a lossy format since there exist songs I only listen to every now and then. Any criticism at all is welcome, I'm simply sharing how I listen to my music at home and on the go.

19 comments:

  1. Woah! That's some useful software you have there. Thanks!

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  2. really instresting soft, i will try it

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  3. Nothing sounds better than a vinyl though... Hehehehe :D

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  4. i used to download FLAC files and not know what they were and just deleted them, good to know..

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  5. you're talking above my head with the tech stuff but good post. for years i thought i'd never get tired of that song but eventually i did
    +followed

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  6. Yeah, I prefer FLAC, and I made sure to download an app for it on my phone. I think FLAC works on more programs, but their both good.

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  7. I 100% can not stand Apple. I have a treasure of CDs I've saved up over the years, and I don't mind portable devices and such, but I really can't stand Apple and they're products. I might give FLAC a try.

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  8. My entire library of music is in FLAC! But I'm a huge audiophile.

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  9. I use mp3 have found it works pretty darn well

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  10. I'm still using MP3. I listen to music mostly in my car, and because I use one of those FM tuners a lot of quality is already lost.

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  11. why arent you using windows media player?? i think its easiest to handle haha

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  12. I usually just listen to it in vo so its usually about a 10 megabyte file, cause I am always huting for hard drive space.

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  13. I don't listen to muic outside my computer, so it's just mp3 and a bit of FLAC.

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  14. Whenever I bother with FLAC I always get disappointed when I can't play it on anything other than my computer.

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  15. ALAC is clearly best, followed

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