Apple knocked it out of the park with the iphone and ipad. Everything else is meh. IMO of course.
That's great that I can play FLAC files on the iphone! I have 4 old phones (2 4S and 5) and they have all been repurposed as the streaming players on any vintage amp. I add a bluetooth adapter from Outlaw Audio to the Aux input and away we go.
I once tried to tell the difference between FLAC, WAV and CD because I happened to be burning some CDs into a headless music server. Since I was curious about the massive size of the wav file vs the much smaller FLAC, I wanted to make sure it actually sounded the same and I'll be darned if I could not hear a difference. If there is a measurable difference, I can't hear it. Ditto CD. I think it was an OMD "Best Of" CD... or maybe Thompson Twins... I don't remember, but I DO remember how I simply could not hear any difference in quality between the three formats.
As far as the argument between MP3 and FLAC, I can only speak to my own experience. I think it's a lot like HDTV. With HDTV, you get used to the quality and then when you suddenly go back to NTSC, you're amazed at how fuzzy and soft the images look. Even at its best NTSC simply cannot compete. However, we were fine with NTSC for decades. Same thing with MP3. For a while, I had only MP3 files and that was what I listened to until I transferred all my CDs to FLAC and was listening to those for the last couple of years (maybe more...who knows?) A few months ago I found a stash of old MP3 files and when I played them back I quickly noticed that I noticed! The music was clearly lacking ::insert audiophile term here:: . So back to FLAC it is!
Check out this one when you have the time:
https://www.stratospherix.com/products/filebrowser/
From what I recall there are three versions; a free one, the 'regular' one, and a business one.
I have no idea what the business one does compared to the regular one.
The free one isn't of any use except for trying it out to see if it works for you, so it's less of a free app and more of a trial thing. Trying out the audio end of it only gives you 20(?) seconds of playback time and then cuts out.
If it works to your liking, the paid version is cheap, plus it can be used on any device that has the same apple account tied to it. I'm at 4 devices for the single purchase right now.
As I mentioned above, they also have another app that is geared towards music only. I have it and like it, I just tend to lean towards FB more. I have a portable hard drive plugged into my router, and after getting FB setup I just used it to search for the folder I want, click play on the first track, and listen.
FB has a bit of low-key clunky interface as far as music players go, but totally suits my needs most of the time. Playlists, searching, etc is not its strong suit. Just playing an album? Fabulous.
Anyway, I think any music fan who also uses Apple stuff should at least be aware of what these guys offer.
Even if one has a way more capable digital music setup and player, it might still be worth a purchase.