FLAC support in iOS 11 - FINALLY

I listen to music through my phone at work while sitting on my desk, i definitely need to charge it else it won't last the whole evening afterwards.

 

Yep, definitely can see how one would be necessary in that kind of scenario.

As far as I know there are 2 different kinds of adaptors for this, with many designs available of each from different manufacturers. But I have no experience with different ones so I can’t really say which is good or better than another, etc.


There are the types that simply turn your one lightning port into 2 lightning ports - the intention is that one port acts as a pass through for your charger, and the other lightning port can be used for the headphone adaptor. You do need to use 2 adaptors with a setup like this but you do have some flexibility, as you could use another DAC instead if you wanted to, or other lightning port accessories may be used while charging - basically the choice is yours as to what you want to plug in that second port.



The other type is the one that only has one lightning port, to act as a pass through for your regular charging cable, and has a 3.5mm headphone jack built in. The upside to this is you only need to carry one adaptor, the downside to this is you can’t use it with other lightning accessories, and you’re at the mercy of the DAC and headphone amp built into this little piece, which may or may not be as good as the Apple designed one built into their little headphone adaptor.




My personal choice would be the one with 2 lightning ports.

 

However today as I've updated my iPhone 7 from iOS 10 to iOS 11.3 the Flacbox app has stopped working. When opened simply displays a blank screen on startup and crashes itself automatically...Anyone else been encountering the same issue? How to fix it?

 

The first thing to do is check if there is an update to the app in the AppStore.

 

Just downloaded is on my phone, running the iOS beta and it doesn't crash. I'd recommend getting the update from the App Store.

 

Here's what i'm wondering: since most Apple users are into the Apple ecosystem, they likely use ALAC or aif. How many are really utilizing FLAC?

 

Yeah, I've wondered this as well. I can of course see a scenario where somebody just prefers FLAC, has ripped their library in FLAC, uses non-Apple products as well, etc. But when one gets to the point where this is actually a problem that upsets them, I think I'd either switch to ALAC or switch to Android, one of the two.

 

There have been FLAC players on iOS and MacOS (OSX) for a long time. Anyone upset by it probably just downloaded one of the many apps that will play FLAC.

Personally, I transcoded all my FLAC files to ALAC a long time ago. When the 160GB iPod Classic came to the market, it replaced the 32 GB Phatnoise unit I had in my car.

 

Yeah, I'd say this fact makes me even more curious as to why folks are concerned here. Especially as there isn't anything particularly compelling about iOS' stock music app and certainly not iTunes.

I'm sure I mentioned this a few pages/months ago, but most of my library is in ALAC due to a previous interest in the Apple ecosystem, and the fact I don't use a single Apple product for music anymore is a non-problem. ALAC isn't open source but it is free, so everything that plays FLAC plays ALAC as well. Just in case anybody is worried about the perils of an ALAC music library, etc.

 

All my high resolution stuff is in FLAC, so yes, I use FLAC files on my iPhone and iPad. All of my CD rips are in FLAC and ALAC, but I generally out of habit use FLAC for all the stuff I sync to Onkyo HF Player.

 

I started my FLAC ripping in 2006, well before I turned to the Dark Side and went all-in with Apple. I suppose I could convert to ALAC, but since Apple doesn't really have a high-end digital player, I'll do fine with my Squeezeboxes and/or Plex for a while longer.

 

ALAC is indeed open source and has been since 2011.

 

True, but Apple people tend to use it out of support from Apple, no?

 

I think what you are saying is that people tend to use ALAC because they live in the Apple Universe. That's true, which doesn't change that it is open source and that it is lossless. The wonderful thing about lossless codex's is that they can be freely converted, one to the other, with no loss of quality. If ITunes was to suddenly support FLAC would I convert all my files to FLAC? Probably not.

 

Hi Paul, just to update you real quick I've been able to get the Flacbox app work once again. What I did was uninstall and reinstall the latest version of the app and it has been running just smooth once again. Thank you so much for your reply

 

Does anyone know what happens to a 24-bit/44.1kHz FLAC file converted to ALAC to put on an IPhone? Is there any loss is quality in the conversion?

 

Lossless to lossless, no quality lost, none gained.

 

From your opinion, I guess my iPhone 7+ is not a high-end digital player; but, I've gotta tell ya, iTunes files delivered wirelessly from on my iPhone to Airport Express connected to my prepro via S/PDIF, sound, in one word, awesome. In fact, it's not at all easy to be able to distinguish the iPhone listening experience from with one where I am sending iTunes Library content to my OPPO-205 usb DAC up sampled to 24/192 for delivery to my prepro. In other words, you've made me wonder, is there a high end digital player out there that will deliver a better experience in any manner that better could be discerned?

 

I'm toying with the idea of putting all of my music in the cloud, using iCloud to store all 1.6TB of my lossless ALAC files (the contents of my iTunes Library folder) which I can then access via iTunes on differing CPUs. That may be an unwise idea for any number of reasons, but a hundred, or hundreds of GB saved would obviously be worth it in that regard.

 

No loss in quality. If you are using an older device with a headphone jack the DAC in the iPhone can handle up to 48k/24 bit without a problem. As per posts above, though, there are a number of software players that will handle FLAC, such as Onkyo HF Player and Foobar.

 

The AirPlay protocol used with an Airport Express uses Apple Lossless at 44.1K/16 bit, so should be decent enough quality, though I have read reports suggesting the the optical out has a high level of jitter. I don't have an Airport set up at present, but AirPlay to my Yamaha amp is indistinguishable from the same material played from my Oppo, or indeed USB stick with the same music on connected directly to the Yamaha amp, and when I used an Airport Express connected to my F80 it basically sounded the same as the original CD [I have my CDs ripped to Apple Lossless in iTunes].

 

Yeah, so, your experience with these concepts are similar to mine. I did not know about jitter issues. I cannot recall what sort of DAC is in my circa 1999 Sony TA-E9000ES prepro, which converts up to 24/96; but, it does seem to convert the 16/44.1 received input without any audible evidence of jitter. At any rate, it's interesting. Oh, one more thing that's interesting, I have iTunes Library set up to allow output up to 24/192, since I have a few 24/192 ALAC and AIFF files in my iTunes Library. Of course, these are all down sampled to 16/44.1 at the Airport Express and all file sizes of same music sound the same through my Home Theatre system. Now, on the other hand, experiments sending those files to OPPO's usbDAC, where everything is up sampled to 24/192, , while still seeming to all sound the same, all sound better, more detail and pronounced tail out performance than from the Airport Express means to pleasure. Thing is, I perceive with the good I'm also hearing tape splice editing from the 50's and 60's DOO WOP I have in my iTunes Library. At any rate, it just all sounds so good these days, everything but the snap, crackle, and pop from vinyl until I've digitized it.

 

I don’t doubt that it sounds excellent

True story - up until a couple of years ago, I was pretty adamant that I needed my lossless files streamed from a local server to every room in the house (main listening room, master bedroom, kitchen, living room, even kids room!) I did this via a variety of Squeezeboxes in every room. With the emergence of cheap Amazon Echo devices, good support for AirPlay 2 to Apple TVs, and finally the Apple HomePod, I realized that lossy music in a casual setting was just fine. And the ability to voice-activate and request 50 million songs was the final nail in the coffin for using Squeezeboxes.

I still use my Logitech Transporter as the high-end digital transport for my main system. Could I use AirPlay to an AppleTV in the same room? Sure. But the Transporter has more output options (can feed my headphone amp in addition to my main set up), doesn’t need the TV on, and I can I can control it via an iPad/iPhone interface (iPeng), so it’s just as simple to navigate as my iPhone.

 

I've read through 8 pages of this now and the thread is starting to wander away from the topic, which tells me FLAC support either isn't really happening or hasn't happened yet. And it seems it'll never get to iTunes. This was the original reason I switched away from the Mac back to a PC -- and I've stayed there since.

Well, that depends on what is meant by "required." When your employer gives you an iPhone and expects you to answer it when the clients call, to my mind that counts as "required." And nobody with half a brain or any semblance of a life wants to carry around two phones and check voicemails in two places. One is bad enough!

It was a problem identified by the sales and marketing departments, which wants to sell you these (admittedly a neat and convenient device): AirPods

Believe me, the change did not come about because a legion of users who had dropped their phones in the toilet demanded a device with less vulnerability to water.

The removal of the headphone jack was one of the most obnoxious changes to a piece of consumer electronics I've ever come across. That said, in the long run -- i.e. 300 bucks later -- things will be better, as I've switched away from a wired connection to the phone after getting the Bose QC35II.

 

Absolutely. Unless you are sitting in the sweet spot in front of floor-standing loudspeakers, or wearing high-end open-back headphones, ~256kbps will be just fine.