These FLAC music players will take your ears to heaven!
One of the many benefits of great internet speeds and performance is being able to stream music on our phones. The gradual revolution of technology introduced new standards and audio formats, one of which is FLAC. As the MP3 format is becoming a thing of past, FLAC format-supporting music apps emerge, and in this article, we’re going to detail them and explain why FLAC is becoming a thing of the future.
What is a FLAC file?
FLAC is an acronym that means Free Lossless Audio Codec and serves to push the MP3 files out of use gradually. It can seamlessly record lossless audio, adding a lot to its details and dynamics. Moreover, it will automatically compress them.
Uncompressed audio files provide stellar sound quality at the cost of storage consumption. For example, if you use an uncompressed file, you will end up using hundreds of MB for a single song, overcrowding space of your smartphone, or other media device. FLAC audio that compresses the file can save up to 50MB of a song and won’t sacrifice the audio quality in the process.
Can a smartphone play FLAC?
Smartphones have replaced various devices, among which are the portable music players we carried around everywhere. Now, these days phone manufacturers have stepped up for audio quality and started to add high-end components like built-in DAC to support high-res audio files like flat, wave in 24-bit/96 kHz or 24-bit/192 kHz or more. This resulted in developers creating FLAC player app for the smartphone. Even the high-definition music players used mainly by audiophiles stand a low chance against powerful smartphones, equipped with a good music player.
With FLAC format growing in popularity, FLAC has started taking over the market and developers have used the opportunity to bring FLAC apps. If you aren’t familiar with these terms, don’t worry. We’re going to detail everything below. FLAC has started taking over the market, and developers have used the opportunity to bring in as many apps as possible.
What FLAC or high res audio means for audiophiles?
FLAC format has vast contributions to stellar audio quality. The detailed and dynamic audio will produce great music experience despite not owning the best audiophile headphones. It supports high-res quality and has various benefits for those who enjoy music on a higher level. The lossless means that the audio quality won’t decline. Instead, the file will retain the same quality and metadata as the original source.
How to get the best possible sound for your music listening?
When it comes to the lossless audio encoding format, it’s a clear competition between FLAC and WAV, even though WAV isn’t what we truly call lossless. FLAC is good in the long run because of its storage, and because it provides a clear and dynamic audio experience.
But how can we make listening to FLAC audio format better? What truly makes it stand out? For one, surround systems can work much better through FLAC music. Additionally, audiophiles who use high-fidelity headphones can enjoy by enhancing their sound or using an equalizer.
Can I play FLAC files on my android?
The reason people opt for Android smartphones so often is that they are flexible and support a great variety of file formats. While android does support playing FLAC, the regular media player that comes as a native app of your phone won’t suffice in playing it.
There are two ways for Android users to play FLAC files. The first is to use an app like UniConverter that can convert and adjust the FLAC format then transfer music to the device, making it the closest audio codec to the studio-grade quality. Another way is to use flac player that supports playing FLAC files. Lastly, these high-res audio players with various features will make the listening experience even better.
Which android media player plays flac?
Onkyo HF Player
Price: Free with ads/ Offers IAP
Onkyo HF Player is an excellent app for audiophiles who are looking for a FLAC file support. It offers 16,384 bands of HD equalization, preserving the audio quality in its original. It is equipped with a linear-phase FIR equalizer, which will help you tweak your favorite music the way you want. You can make your own EQ presets and optimize them through filters.
Other features include petit lyrics support, upsampling function, crossfade playback option, shuffling, and other media player features.
AIMP
Price: Free
AIMP is simple to use but uses a traditional approach when it comes to listing playlists. It supports a great variety of codecs and formats, one of which is FLAT. Aside from phones, it also works Android Auto and custom Car PC. There are also several output methods like AudioTrack, OpenSL, and others.
It’s a remarkably balanced app which can meet all your adjusting requirements and help you enjoy listening to your favorite music in its original shape. There are some traditional features like Playback speed control, sleep timer, and 29-band graphic equalizer.
VLC For Android
Price: Free
VLC isn’t the most known for a visually appealing interface, but just like its desktop app, the mobile version looks flawlessly. It supports FLAC format, among many others. It’s easy to use, doesn’t take a lot of storage, or throttle your device’s performance.
The codecs are integrated inside the app, so there are no add-ons to download. It has intuitive playback control, boasts multiple folder-styled playlists, powerful graphic equalizer, and can use various sources from both online and offline media. It’s a great app if you’re aiming for consistency.
FLAC Player
Price: Free with ads
If you have a lot of FLAC audio on your phone but don’t have an adequate media player to listen to them, the FLAC Player may be a great option. Its simple and intuitive user interface makes it extremely simple to use. You can easily adjust the tracks and have various playback controls over those files. The only bad thing is that it may not work as well with less powerful phones and may crash.
Pi Music Player – Free Music Player, YouTube Music
Price: Free with ads/ Offers IAP
Similarly to Pulsar, Pi Music player also plays YouTube music videos and MP3 files. Nevertheless, it provides support for FLAC format. This app is fantastic because its user-interface is soothing to the eye and easy to navigate through. It is equipped with great playback options and adjustments. It also provides some separate features like the ringtone cutter, 5-band equalizer, and battery saver. It’s definitely worth a try if you swap between MP3 and FLAC.
Foobar2000
Price: Free
Intuitive and user-friendly, foobar2000 is equipped with advanced and useful features to listen to FLAC music, as well as MP3, MP4, AAC, Vorbis, Opus, and others. It has great Playback controls and a lot of features to control the pace and shuffling of the music that’s played. It also has ReplayGain support for playback and scanning. If you want to download media, this app supports playback from UPnP media servers. All in all, it’s not too tasking on hardware resources, it’s easy to use and provides crisp and dynamic soundstage.
Hiby Music
Price: Free with ads
Hiby is a free lossless HiFi audio player that offers a wide and vibrant soundstage supported on multiple file types alongside FLAC. You can play DSD, ISO, WAV, AAC, Mp3, Ogg, Vorbis, and other media files. There is also support for the CUE sheet. The high-end decoding provides 32-bit output as well as 64-bit floating-point decoding. Lastly, the 128-bit internal precision makes for the stellar audio quality. There is also support for external USB DAC along with DXD or DoP output.
Pulsar Music Player
Price: Free with ads
Pulsar is originally targeted towards MP3 songs. However, it’s important to note it boasts support for multiple formats, one of which is FLAC. It has a great user-interface and a lot of useful features great for listening to high-quality lossless music. It provides gapless playback, displays lyrics, crossfade, speed adjusting, tag editing, and more. It is equipped with everything a good music app should have. Additionally, it can sync missing album images automatically.
Omnia – Hi-Res MP3 Player, APE Player
Price: Free/ Offers IAP
Omnia has smooth and appealing navigation and looks that would attract all music lovers. It also has support for a great variety of formats and settings that make listening to the music on it a great experience. It is equipped with an amazing 10-band equalizer, which has a relatively small footprint. The best features you can get out of it include gapless playback, lyric displaying, crossfade, tag editing, and other great features.
Frolomuse Mp3 Player – Music & Equalizer
Price: Free
This is another app with an emphasis on MP3 files, but it has developed sufficiently through the years to embrace other file formats like FLAC. The FLAC files sound crisp, clean, detailed, and dynamic. The bass is strong and ground shaking, with the rest of the soundstage dominating and being as beautiful as it can get. It also comes with great features like the gapless playback you can easily control. It’s definitely worth a try.
Conclusion
With Frolomuse, we finalize our list of the best FLAC players for android. Although the player itself is not hard to find, it’s important to put features into consideration. An equalizer is a vital asset to the lossless feeling of the music. However, other intuitive features related to the playback control are also essential to have a flawless experience. Which FLAC player for android is your favorite?
Another method is to use Avdshare Audio Converter to batch convert multiple FLAC files to Android more supported MP3.