What you do with your FLAC files

[Polarbear]

i burn them to cd, because my hifi system (cd-player) beats any computer. my only concern is, that nobody can exactly tell how long data on a cd will last.

Longer than the average lifetime of a hdd in any case, so burning on discs can be a valuable data storage procedure.

You're right about another thing too: many computers lack the hardware quality to play lossless music back in a quality that is deserving for the format, take all those onboard music chips for example. Given the appropriate hardware, a computer based hifi system can be much more comfortable to use though and that's the large drawback of burning CD's and being limited to one album at a time. (And in the end it isn't all that expensive because it can be a multi-purpose system)

edit: VLC does what every media player capable of the FLAC format does: decoding it. It would be a pretty useless piece of software if it couldn't play audio back in the input format But I agree with krunktastic that other players are better suited for audio playback, not because of questionable quality but because they're better suited to handling playlists like the mentioned foobar2k.

you are right about the comfort factor. i sometimes listen to radio shows, dj mixes or mp3/flac playlists with my mac hooked up to my hifi system.

but when it comes to sound no computer can beat my cambridge audio azur 840c.

and when i want the real thing soundwise i listen to the good old vinyl - no risk of losing data and the best sound that one can imagine.

[Adman65]

I like to listen to FLAC on my set of 2 speakers. They are both 2" in diameter. They have good bass.

DOH. Need a decent system to hear the difference.

[Skiz]

Moved to "Music".

I listen to them on the PC and burn some to disc.

[whitmar]

[Doesn't VLC compress the audio...defeating the whole purpose of FLAC?

Try foobar2000.

Thanks for the suggestion--I will. btw, I didn't mean to imply that I play flac files on my computer with VLC through my hi-fi system. I agree that would not sound very good. I'm glad to hear foobar2000 doesn't compress audio. I have the files, just never installed it. tbh, I'm not sure my modest computer speakers would sound much better though. I only listen to music through the computer when my wife is asleep or when I'm editing or compiling.

@Skizo: Hook 'em Horns, neighbor!

[Skiz]

@Skizo: Hook 'em Horns, neighbor!

[mrSnoggins]

FLACs are for CDs imo.

[AugustoP]

Funny thing is most of people who download flacs can't differentiate it from V0 or 192 kbit mp3 in a double blind test.

This is a pure nonsense, with the right sound equipment u will
definitely hear the difference, but i geuss u right when the
equipment is shitty.

Conduct a test with foobar's ABX comparator and you'll see it yourself.

[orfik]

I eat them.

[grimms]

How you play flac? I have the frontend but don't know how to play them on my pc. I do burn them to cd though (loseless).

[Actatoi]

How you play flac? I have the frontend but don't know how to play them on my pc. I do burn them to cd though (loseless).

I use foobar. Don't know if it's the best but it does the job.