[Smidgerine]

I have a QNAP NAS that has my media on it.  I would like to play my music FLACs on my 920.  I thought the Play To app would do this, but now after looking at it, it seems that the Play To app is a server, and not a receiver.  I really would love it if I could get this feature back.  I had it on Android and iOS and I really do like WP8 and I don't see a FLAC app at all.  Any chance Play To can be a receiver that will support FLAC playback?  Thanks!!

[piran]

Ditto... I too would like my Lumia ( 800 ) to be able to be FLAC-capable.

[moopig]

I've seen the Lumia 920 and 820 and liked them, but their inability to play FLAC files or stream music from my home music server are the sole reasons I don't own a Lumia phone yet.  If Nokia/Microsoft don't fix this soon then I never wil: I will be forced to buy Android when I eventually take the plunge and dive into the world of smartphones.

[paulheu · Accepted solution]

Windows Phone does not play FLAC natively. You can however stream FLAC files (transcoded to mp3) using Plex..

Then there's Flac Player in the store as well.

[moopig]

Thanks for the info, paulheu.

The Plex player option looks interesting.  For several years I have been streaming from my FLAC music library on a PC at home to SlimDevices/Logitch Squeezebox players when I visit other people's houses.  The uplink speed from my house isn't yet sufficient to reliably stream 96kHz/24-bit FLAC files (~3Mbps) so I have the server set to transcode on the fly to 320kbps MP3 for players on the Internet.  For streaming to a mobile device or a remote hi-fi for this is perfectly acceptable, and I don't need to maintain a shadow music library in AAC or MP3 format.  However, Plex seems to require you to sign up for a service in order to stream from your home to the Internet.  Admittedly it looks like it's free, but why should you need to go through them at all to get at your own music?

The FLAC player seems to get mixed reviews, but most are positve.  There's no mention of whether it will handle hi-res FLAC files as well as the standard 44.1kHz/16-bit ones, but assuming it does then it might do the job for me if they can update it to play from internal memory and the micro-SD card (at the moment it appears to only play from Skydrive).  However, I like to keep the amount of third party software installed on my machines to an absolute minimum.  I notice that this package seems to come from an outfit with no address or phone number and Russian connections, and that doesn't make me want to rush out and get it.

Since FLAC is the most popular lossless music format, and lossless is the future (or the present for a lot of people), wouldn't it be so much easier for everyone if Microsoft or Nokia just made the Lumias play FLAC straight out of the box?

I'll keep watching this thread...

[theking2]

Hi!

The problem with FLAC is that it is a open standard. Very open. Microsoft ec have embrased DRM to secure there revenue. As did Apple. That is one of the reasons that the commercial business frownes upon FLAC. Not that is it not good but that it is too good.

What I did is convert my FLAC collection to an MP3 collection for mere enjoyment on mobile devices. I know, mp3 is a **bleep** standard but there we are. On the awesome headphones that nokia provides along its phones you would not hear a difference.

j

[paulheu]

I will dare anyone that they will not hear the difference between a properly encoded 320kbps MP3 and a FLAC encoded file in a blind test. In general, but especially for a mobile device or average home system the whole 'purist' argument is plain nonsense.

[moopig]

I agree that sound quality isn't much of an issue for mobile devices, and 320kbps MP3 or AAC is fine.  My main reason for wanting FLAC is that I am about half way through ripping my CD collection and putting it onto a music server.  I have done 1100 albums so far.  I also only buy lossless music online and it all comes as FLAC.  I don't want to maintain two separate msuic libraries, one lossless and another lossy one for awkward portable devices. Even the three year old matchbox sized music player I use in the gym plays FLAC (Sandisk Sansa Clip+, 8GB internal with 64GB micro-SD card).

MP3 is 20 nearly years old.  It was created to fullfill a need.  Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s network bandwidth and device storage capacity weren't capable of handling full rate CD audio.  But times have moved on a bit and there's no excuse for not supporting lossless audio these days.  Even if the improvement in sound quality isn't required (or detectable) it's a major matter of user convenience for some people.

The Windows Phone 8 and the Lumias don't support ANY lossless music format - not even Microsoft's WMA lossless (not that I'd use it).  I suspect the real reason is that the Lumias have small internal storage and most have no memory card slots.  Anyone trying to copy their lossless audio files onto a Lumia would very quickly find the available storage was a bit limiting.

I haven't seen an online music store trying to flog files with DRM for several years now.  Even Apple have realised that no matter how much record companies want it the public just wouldn't buy it.

Come on Nokia/Microsoft:  I really want to buy one of your products but music on the move is really important to me.