4 ms·
What's the point of this over flac?
by gtrak 15y ago
What's the point of this over flac?
- jpeterson 15y agoiTunes does not support FLAC.
- willidiots 15y agoiDevices don't support FLAC, IIRC.
- mortenjorck 15y agoIt allows you to play lossless audio on the combined 400 million(1) iPods and iOS devices out there. (1)http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/04/apple-lawsuit-reveals-60-million-ipod-touches-sold-to-date.ars http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/04/apple-lawsuit-reve...
- juliano_q 15y agoWell, FLAC already can be played in the millions of Android phones out there. I don't see the point in having two different formats, it will just make worse for the consumer who want to change from one platform to another. I bought a lot of FLAC music and it is a shame that I can only listen it on my Android phone and not on my iPod.
- icefox 15y agoBeen hunting around, but does anyone know the first ipod to support it?
- andfarm 15y agoIt plays on iPods and other iOS devices. Other than that, not much -- FLAC's compression ratio is a bit better on average, and more non-Apple devices support it. The release of this code isn't really all that exciting, as there's already a free reverse-engineered implementation in libav. (It might not support all the modes described in this source release, though.)
- wefqwef123 15y agohe means ffmpeg
- sitkack 15y agoffmpeg renamed themselves to libav
- tjpick 15y agoconsumer products that actually support it?
- Andys 15y agoAndroid market has had at least one FLAC player for at least 2 years now
- artsrc 15y agoI have had something like this for 3 years: http://www.logitech.com/en-au/speakers-audio/wireless-music-systems/devices/5745 http://www.logitech.com/en-au/speakers-audio/wireless-music-...
- BitMastro 15y agoFLAC has been supported by Rockbox http://www.rockbox.org/ http://www.rockbox.org/ since 2005.. I remember using it in my iriver H300, iPods were supported as well
- tjpick 15y agowell yeah, decoders exist. Rockbox doesn't qualify as a "consumer product" in the sense I was using the term. IE, walk into my local electronics store and pick up a device and take it to the till. Good point (to the other poster) about the squeezebox though, quite correct.
- msbarnett 15y agoDedicated playback hardware on iOS devices.
- jsz0 15y agoI'm not familiar with the current state of FLAC but as of a few years ago ALAC offered better meta-data in the MP4 container. Part of the reason I abandoned FLAC years ago was constant problems with meta-data. I would often end up corrupt files post-tagging or the player would simply not show meta-data I had meticulously added to my bootleg collection. I got the sense at the time that there was a lack of agreement on how meta-data was supposed to work in FLAC files.
- uriel 15y agoAfaik FLAC this days uses an ogg container, which is where the metadata goes, so support should be as good as for Ogg Vorbis. In practical terms, I have a huge collection of FLAC, and never had trouble with metadata, sounds like a bug in whatever player you were using.
- nitrogen 15y agoNote to uriel: your last few posts are all [dead] for some reason. uriel 2 hours ago | link [dead] Afaik FLAC this days uses an ogg container, which is where the metadata goes, so support should be as good as for Ogg Vorbis. In practical terms, I have a huge collection of FLAC, and never had trouble with metadata, sounds like a bug in whatever player you were using.
- Freaky 15y agoThe Ogg container is optional, and I can't say I've seen it used much, if ever - I gather its main use was for streaming. FLAC has its own metadata as part of the spec: http://flac.sourceforge.net/format.html#metadata_block http://flac.sourceforge.net/format.html#metadata_block
- mikeash 15y agoIn addition to iOS playback as mentioned by other posters, ALAC is also used when streaming AirPlay audio. I would have killed for this code a few years ago.