Lossless Audio Files To Play On iPhone

I know of two apps that are able to play lossless audio files on iPhone:

- FLAC Player
- GoldenEar

Each have its unique features:

FLAC Player only plays FLAC, but it includes an equalizer with lots of presets.

GoldenEar plays FLAC, APE and some other loss-less audio formats. It does not have an equalizer.

So far in my testing, GoldenEar seems to handle CUE sheet better. Given a FLAC file and a CUE sheet, it represents the FLAC file as an album (just as expected), and individual tracks are correctly recognized as songs. FLAC Player, on the other hand, does not seem to recognize CUE sheet in my testing. A FLAC file is played like a song without splitting out individual tracks.

Both apps plays FLAC well. While GoldenEar also plays APE, it did have some problem play one of the APE files in my testing. The beginning 1-2 seconds of the file sounded like skipped and broken. It seems the app is lagging on trying to process the file. The rest of the file plays fine.

Since FLAC Player seems to be more advanced in playback due to its cool equalizer, it would be a waste if the problem with CUE sheet and other loss-less formats (like APE) prevents us from using its full potential.

One way to go around CUE sheet is to extract individual track on a computer, and then copy the FLAC of individual track to FLAC Player. A free tool called CUETools can do this pretty well. Use the CUETools.exe to accomplish this.

APE files can be converted to individual FLAC tracks using foobar2000.

Lossless Audio Files To Play On iPod

Single Ape or FLAC With Cue Sheet

I have tried the method described here on FLAC using Nero 9. Nero 9 includes the FLAC plug-in and everything works. It looks like I need to install an APE plug-in for Nero 9 and I'm still not sure how to do this.

To convert APE/FLAC with cur sheet to MP3, in general, you use Nero 9 to open the APE/FLAC cue sheet with the help of the plug-ins, and then burn it to a virtual CD which creates a .nrg image file. Next use Daemon tools to mount the .nrg file so it looks like a CD drive to the computer. In order to create MP3 files you need LAME and I found one here. This is a "back-end" file. EAC provides the front-end for extracting the tracks from the .nrg file into individual MP3 files using LAME.

FLAC to MP3

Individual FLAC files can be converted to MP3. This guide is great. The method uses foobar 2000 to convert FLAC to MP3. It needs LAME to create the MP3.

APE to MP3

not yet.

Media files guide for Windows

Media players:

Media Player Classic
Notes: Good video player. Ok audio player.

DirectShow-based media codecs:

How to play FLAC files
Notes: To play in Media Player Classic we need a DirectShow filter. Illiminable OGG Directshow filter is a good one.

Monkey Audio DirectShow Filter Source Filter
RadLight APE DirectShow Filter
Notes: You need both of the above to play APE in Media Player Classic.

FFDShow MPEG-4 Video Decoder
Plays H264. Has versions to use CPU's MMX or SSE/SSE2.

Haali Matroska Spiltter
For the most popular mkv.

CoreVorbis
Open-source audio compression comparative to MPEG-4(AAC), higher performance than MP3. Aka OGG.

AVI files encoded using IV31 IV32 IV41 IV50
Some very old AVI files were encoded using IV50 (in my case). Microsoft disable the playback of these files in Windows Media Player for XP and onward. You now need to pay f**king $15 to get it from Ligos. Ridiculous! Rest free, there is an alternative site. Install iv5setup.exe here and use Media Player Classic to play these files in Windows XP. The big disappointment is that his doesn't seem to work in Windows 7. My suggestion: as soon as you get the codecs, convert these files to a more universal video format, don't pay the stupid Ligos.

General

General playback of media files
Notes: Has how-tos for many media file types.

Other Useful Tools

GraphEdit
Final Codec 2009 ny
CoreAVC Pro Edition
Any Video Converter Free Edition