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Topic: FLAC playback apps on Mac (Read 4846 times) previous topic - next topic
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FLAC playback apps on Mac

new to the Mac OS as I just migrated to the Mini M1 from a PC. I was using foobar on my PC for playback, tagging, etc but now i need a similar option for the Mac.

what do people suggest? not only playback, but i do need the option to tag files (live show tagger), add artwork, adjust properties and tags, and the foobar version on the mac doesnt seem to have this functionality.

open to any and all suggestions. thanks in advance!

Re: FLAC playback apps on Mac

Reply #1 –
foobar2000 for Mac can take care of your needs for playback and tagging, as well as adding artwork. If you can't get it to work, there's always MP3Tag, which is paid software on macOS. This may be worth it to you then?

For playback alternatives, there's also my own player, Cog, at https://cog.losno.co, but it doesn't support editing tags (yet?). I've been told that adding tagging would just continue to grow the features toward bloat, but I don't really know. For one thing, tag writing would mean that I have to track whether I'm going to modify the currently playing file, then stop playback entirely, then restart where it left off.

Re: FLAC playback apps on Mac

Reply #2 –
Foobar for Mac is good, Cog is good, there's also DeaDBeeF (https://deadbeef.sourceforge.io). META is a good tagger, but no playback

Re: FLAC playback apps on Mac

Reply #3 –
thanks for the feedback & suggestions!

does foobar on Mac have the Live Show Tagger plugin? if so, then i agree it should do the trick, but i dont see it, so if anyone can direct me, that would be great. basically, i want to tag recordings w/ date/venue/city/song title info from a text file.

i will check out Cog and DeadBeef!

Re: FLAC playback apps on Mac

Reply #4 –
Quote from: tapeworm48 on
thanks for the feedback & suggestions!

does foobar on Mac have the Live Show Tagger plugin? if so, then i agree it should do the trick, but i dont see it, so if anyone can direct me, that would be great. basically, i want to tag recordings w/ date/venue/city/song title info from a text file.

i will check out Cog and DeadBeef!



There are no plugins for foobar on Mac

Re: FLAC playback apps on Mac

Reply #5 –
It is a sin that there is still no FLAC support in iTunes, both for Mac and Windows versions

Re: FLAC playback apps on Mac

Reply #6 –
iTunes is dead.

Re: FLAC playback apps on Mac

Reply #7 –
Quote from: kode54 on
iTunes is dead.

I wonder how one is supposed to download and purchase music from their store on their PCs?  It's all their software has ever been useful for me is access to their online music store.

Re: FLAC playback apps on Mac

Reply #8 –
Quote from: kode54 on
iTunes is dead.

It’s still the only solution to synchronize files to the iPhone’s music library or create local device backups, so I would say it is still alive. Just not well.

Re: FLAC playback apps on Mac

Reply #9 –
Well, it's still installable. But I don't think they're updating it any longer, except for maintenance releases.

Re: FLAC playback apps on Mac

Reply #10 –
Quote from: kode54 on
Well, it's still installable. But I don't think they're updating it any longer, except for maintenance releases.

They’d just have to maintain some FLAC support in (which would take all of what, 2 minutes for some intern at the world’s most valuable corporation?) and I’d be perfectly content

Re: FLAC playback apps on Mac

Reply #11 –
The thing is, almost all of the functionality they've bothered to maintain lately has had to do with their Music store and streaming service. They have no reason to migrate that to FLAC, when they've got their flaky ALAC solution. (I say flaky, because it has no extensions to the format to verify integrity, and transfers do fail randomly and quite often, resulting in ear splitting garbage on playback.)

They don't want you to play your own local content, or rip your own local content, they want you to buy music from them, and subscribe to their service.

Re: FLAC playback apps on Mac

Reply #12 –
You’re not wrong, I just wish it weren’t true. It doesn’t have to be one at the expense of the other. Unfortunately a small handful of people who know/care enough about this stuff aren’t enough to move the needle on getting FLAC support added. And if I have no reasonable way to listen to my own FLAC files on my own device (without converting to ALAC or being sandboxed into some 3rd party app - no thank you) then I have no reason to supplement my listening with a subscription to Apple Music. I’d love a nice lossless/hi-res streaming service, but as a complement to my library, not a replacement for it.

Re: FLAC playback apps on Mac

Reply #13 –
It's kind of dumb, too, because it's not even supported on macOS, even though you can preview them in Finder in anything 10.15 or newer, I think? Yeah, Audio Toolbox supports them, but the only bundled organizing player doesn't support them. It's nuts.

Re: FLAC playback apps on Mac

Reply #14 –
Don't know if this is the right thread to post this in, but mods can move if needed.

From Hiby when I was trying to get info on using a Mac to do playlists (including flac) for my Hiby R3 Pro:

Thank you for your email.

The HiBy R3 Pro is not an Android device and is based on HiBy OS only, which does not support any third-party app installation. The only supported streaming services are Tidal and Qobuz Online, download and offline features are not supported. However, the HiBy R3 Pro can be used as a computer's DAC, or it can be connected to a phone via Bluetooth for listening to streaming music. Hope that helps.

The HiBy R3 Pro only supports the playlist in M3U format, you can find the following recommendations for building m3u files for the HiBy R3 Pro:

1. Download and install foobar2000： https://www.foobar2000.org/
2. Connect the HiBy R3 Pro to your computer as storage device (so you can read the music files from your computer)
3. Drag the files you want to make into a playlist into the playlist window of foobar. Order them as you want them to be ordered. If you want to create multiple playlists, you can right-click on the playlists tab to create a new playlist.
4. Right click on each playlist, choose "save playlist" and--navigate to the micro SD card belonging to the HiBy R3 Pro and save your playlist there, outside of any folders. Remember to change the file type to m3u or m3u8 rather than the default .fpl

Now, after you safely eject the HiBy R3 Pro and rescan your library, the playlists should appear and work.