FLAC, stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, is basically a format for audio coding. It is open-source, so FLAC is popular among artists. More importantly, this format has the capacity to compress music and produce small file size without losing much quality. While TVs have become better and better over the decade, music is still popular. This article will identify and share top 10 FLAC player apps to help you listen to music on Windows, Mac, iPhone and Android devices.
FLAC Player- 'Great player, great sound.Very good resolution of the display which is not typical for many other portable players. Great sound quality, especially when playing high-res FLAC files, makes it a great product.Great music player.If you use this item in the car as MP3 player with power plug-in, you should be good.'
- Flac Player free download - Free FLAC to MP3 Converter, GOM Player, MP4 Player, and many more programs.
Part 1: Top 5 FLAC Players for PC/Mac
Top 1: Apeaksoft Blu-ray Player
Platform: Windows 10/8/7/Vista/XP, Mac OS X 10.7 and above
#1 Music Player for iPhone and Mac! ITunes, personal music collection, SoundCloud®, Spotify – listen to the music in the highest quality from different music sources. Key features: VOX supports all popular formats including Hi-Res ones. Lossless: FLAC, APE, WAV, ALAC, etc. And Lossy: MP3, WM. $1 Patrons get extra vids a week!: on Twitter now: the snake: https://www.instagram.com.
Apeaksoft Blu-ray Player is a high-end FLAC player for both PC and Mac. Firstly, it supports almost all music formats including FLAC, AAC, WMA, M4A, etc. Moreover, it enables you to enjoy music videos and other multimedia contents.
- Support hundreds of multimedia formats.
- Optimize music quality automatically.
- Available to Windows and Mac.
- Include a professional equalizer.
- Cons
- You need to purchase a license after free-trial.
How to Play FLAC Music on PC
Step 1Open a FLAC file
Launch the best FLAC player once you install it on your computer. Click the Open File button, find and select the FLAC file you want to listen to, and click Open button. After loading, you will be taken to the player window.
Step 2Control FLAC playback
Now, the music will begin playing immediately. You can put the FLAC player in the background and do other activity. If the sound is poor, click go to the Audio menu from the top ribbon and then adjust the channel, stereo and more according to your need.
Top 2: Foobar2000
Flac Player Mac
Platform: Windows 7 or newer, Mac OS 10.11 or newer
Foobar2000 is a FLAC player for PC and Mac. Moreover, it offers a mobile app for iPhone and Android devices. Although free to use, it is able to deliver superb audio quality without using much resources.
- Pros
- Enables you to customize layout.
- Load music and playlists quickly.
- Support the popular audio formats.
- Cons
- There are too many features for beginners.
- Some buttons don’t work sometimes.
Flac Player For Windows
Top 3: Winamp
Platform: Windows 10/8/7
As one of the best FLAC players, Winamp has been around for years. The developer keeps introducing updates and adding new features into the player. It supports music syncing as well.
- Pros
- Change skins according to your preference.
- Extend features with plugins.
- Manage music in playlists.
- Cons
- The interface is mess and difficult to navigate.
- It cannot enhance audio quality.
Top 4: MediaMonkey
Platform: Windows 10/8/7
MediaMonkey is a free FLAC player and it provides several plans with bonus features. It lets you manage the music files on playlists and listen to them without interruption. It also has an app for Android.
- Pros
- Organize large collection of music quickly.
- Free to use with limit.
- Remove duplicates from your library.
- Cons
- It becomes buggy over times.
- Metadata may be missed sometimes.
Top 5: MusicBee
Platform: Windows 10/8/7/Vista
MusicBee is a FLAC player distributed by the author freely. It is able to detect the music files on your hard disk and enables you to manage them in playlists. Plus, it supports a variety of plugins.
- Pros
- Provide plentiful skins and themes.
- Download and autofill metadata for songs.
- Offer a portable version.
- Cons
- It may slow down your computer.
- It does not have the system media playback interface.
Part 2: Top 5 FLAC Player Apps for iPhone/Android
Top 1: VLC
Platform: iOS 9.0 or later, Android 6.0 or later
VLC is an open-source FLAC player for both iPhone and Android devices. It equips with a huge package of codecs, so you can play a wide range of media files including FLAC music and more.
- Pros
- Totally free of charge with no ads.
- Sync music files to Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.
- Control music playback speed.
- Play other audio formats on iPhone like WAV, WMA, AIFF, etc.
- Cons
- The playlist feature is not available to all devices.
- It does not support background playback.
Top 2: JetAudio
Platform: iOS 9.0 or later, Android 4.1 and up
JetAudio is a FLAC player available to both iPhone and Android devices. It integrates the AM3D Audio Enhancer, and a lot of sound effects. Therefore, the music playback quality is pretty good.
- Pros
- Include 20-brands graphic equalizer.
- Browse music by album art.
- Play music in background.
- Remove ads by purchasing the plus version.
- Cons
- It takes up much space when playing music.
- The app icon looks pretty bad.
Top 3: AIMP Player
Platform: iOS 9.0 or later, Android 4.4 and up
If you just need to play local FLAC files on smartphone, AIMP Player is a good choice, although it does not have built-in music library. It can meet your basic need on music enjoyment on iPhone and Android.
- Pros
- Control music playback with gestures.
- Listen to music in playlist continuously.
- Support balance control and speed adjustment.
- Cons
- The FLAC player cannot add music files to playlist from folders.
- The interface loos outdated.
Top 4: Onkyo HF Player
Platform: iOS 9.2 or later, Android 5.0 and up
Sometimes, free FLAC players cannot meet your need on music playback. Onkyo HF Player is a good choice for people who are sensitive to audio quality and experience. You can view ads to exchange features.
- Pros
- Include high-precision equalizer.
- Display lyrics and album artwork.
- Provides several equalizer presets.
- Cons
- You can only purchase the pro version to remove ads.
Top 5: GOM Player
Platform: iOS 10.0 or later, Android 4.4 and up
GOM Player is another free FLAC player app for iPhone and Android users. There is no option involved with payment, but you can view ads to get the full features. It supports speed control, gesture, music management and more.
- Pros
- Play non-encoded music and video files.
- Navigate easily with the clear UI.
- Support sleep timer.
- Cons
- It cannot sync files from PC through network.
Part 3: FAQs about FLAC Player
Is FLAC the highest quality?
Since FLAC is a lossless audio format, it provides better quality than lossy formats, such as MP3. Of course, the cost is to produce large file size.
Is FLAC better than MP3?
The answer depends on your purpose. FLAC offers better audio quality, while MP3 is widely supported by most media players and digital devices. Moreover, MP3 is more suitable to distribute on the internet. To play FLAC on more devices, you should convert FLAC to MP3.
Is FLAC 16 or 24 bit?
FLAC is not just restricted to 16-bit, and you can save music files up to 24-bit/192kHz for better quality. However, the file size will become larger with high quality.
Conclusion
Now, you should master at least top 10 best FLAC player applications for Windows, Mac, iPhone and Android. They all have unique benefits and downsides. You can pick the most appropriate one based on your situation. Apeaksoft Blu-ray Player, for example, provides both basic and advanced controls for music playback on PC and Mac. If you have other problems related to music, please feel free to leave a message below this post.
In this article, we are going to learn about FLAC files and how to listen to them using FLAC PLAYERS on a Windows PC. We will have a look at 16 best FLAC players available for Windows 10/8/7 and learn about their features. Read along to find out!
Before moving forward with the list of Best FLAC Players for Windows, let’s what FLAC file format is. In case you are just interested in the list itself, feel free to skip this part straight to it.
Flac Player
Contents
- 2 Best Flac Players for Windows
What is FLAC file format?
Audio files out there are available in two formats- Lossy and Lossless. As you might have already guessed, Lossless audio sounds better. FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec. FLAC is just more crisp, clear. In a nutshell FLAC is a better music experience.
Flac Player Linux
Best Flac Players for Windows
Your journey to amazing lossless music doesn’t ends with downloading the file itself. You are also going to need a FLAC Audio Player to play those files on your computer. If you use a Windows PC, then this is the guide for you. Below is the list of top FLAC Music players for Windows out there.
1. Groove Music
Yes, you heard me right. The pre-installed software to play audio files on Windows, can actually play FLAC files. The built-in Groove Music app can play FLAC files. Many are still unaware of this.
During its early days, Groove wasn’t even able to play a heavily compressed file. But it has surely come a long way since then. Now, the software is more than equipped to play almost any file format out there.
The interface looks fantastic. It’s minimalistic, easy to use and very user-friendly. And if you own the Groove Music Pass you can store all your audio content on One-Drive and stream it on your device over the internet. Not to mention, it’s absolutely free. It comes pre-installed on your Windows. All in all, Groove Music is an amazing crisp music playing software which can meet almost all your music needs.
2. Windows Media Player 12
Number two on our list of Best FLAC Players is again a pre-installed Windows software- The Windows Media Player. The Windows Media Player has been there since the dawn of Windows itself. And the old champion is still managing his weight amongst the new softwares out there. Compared to the new softwares which have a modern feel to them, Windows Media Player sure does look a bit old. Based on its outlook, some might even call it obselete. But no my friend, this is where you are wrong. Sure it’s a bit old and rusty. But it does the job just fine.
In order to listen to FLAC in Windows Media Player you may need to install a codec. But apart from that it’s free, easy to use and pre-installed on your Windows computer.
3. VLC Media Player
Probably the most versatile and fan-favorite player out there, the VLC Media Player is third on on our list. The biggest plus point of VLC Media Player is its versatility. If there exists a media format exists, it’s highly probable that the VLC Media Player will be able to play it. So, FLAC files are not a problem at all for the VLC Media Player.
VLC also comes in two versions for Windows. The first is the Windows 10 Store version which is built for phones, PCs, tablets and Xbox One. The other is the old-school desktop app which we are all familiar with.
Below are the links to download both the versions of the VLC Media Player.
4. FOOBAR2000
Foobar2000 is not a popular flac software for sure. But when it comes to playing FLAC files the FOOBAR2000 does tge job as well as any other media player. In fact the FOOBAR200 was pushing forwards with a Windows Store application to replace its existing Win32 version. But due to low user count, that project was terminated. But I request you to not let this discourage you from using this beautiful software.
Actually FOOBAR2000 has several good points. After setting it up you can tweak the interface to be just to your liking. Other than FLAC, the FOOBAR2000 is sufficient to play other formats as well. It’s got a built in transcoder, support for full Unicode, tags, and gapless playback.
That’s it, these were the 4 Best Flac Music Players. But wait, we have more.
List of Top 16 Free Flac Music Players
Apart from the top 4 listed players, there are many more audio player software that can play Flac Audio format. So here is a big list of all flac supported media players.
- Groove Music
- Windows Media Player 12
- VLC Media Player
- Foobar2000
- MusicBee
- Dopamine
- Breadplayer
- GOM Media Player
- WinAmp
- MediaMonkey
- iTunes
- 5kPlayer
- Trout
- AIMP
- Jet Audio
- Pot Player
Well, to be honest, this list can go on and on. Almost every player can play Flac files these days. So you don’t really have to worry about it. Just pick the player based on other features that are more important.
Final Take
So, these were 16 Free FLAC players available on Windows 10. I hope you enjoyed reading this article. Please comment below and let us know about your favorite FLAC media player! As always, we would love to hear from you.