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To FLAC or not to FLAC, That's the question.

A

Alobar

Addicted Member
It's been a while since I have used my smartphone for my home music server. Since then I have been rebuilding my music collection with CD's primarily on my pc using JRiver to play through a nice sounding DAC to my vintage amp and speakers and all in all have been a much happier camper without the old mp3's through the phone.

However there are times when there is simply no other good choice for music than the always present Android phone. Airports and long flights with sound canceling headphones are one, and long road trips in the car another. Music can drown out the undesirable and make the time go by. I am currently in the process of getting a new smartphone and am considering going with lossless FLAC files in the place of what I am using now which is 320kbps mp3. Is it worth the considerable increase in the amount of space FLAC files will take up considering the phone's questionable sound quality internal DAC? The two new phones I am considering are the Samsung Galaxy Note 5 and the Galaxy S6,both of which no longer have any place to plug in a micro SD card, thus I must buy one with quite a bit more internal storage. I will be deciding how much storage my new phone will have based largely on which file format I go with. Will FLAC files sound that much better, particularly using a headset than the mp3's I listen to now while away from home?
 
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botrytis said:
You can change the amount of space you use with FLAC by changing the amount of compression used. Most times FLAC's will be 1/2 the size of a WAV file.

I find I can hear the difference, depending on the original master (bad master - no; good master - yes). Why not just test one out and compare MP3 to FLAC on your headset and see. You can always do FLAC on your PC and then convert to MP3 and load onto your Android (you can convert in JRiver pretty easily).

Also, Gizmo is awesome as a remote control for JRiver on the Android. Just an FYI.
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Thanks, Due to a weird deal that only a cellphone provider could come up with, because my wife dropped her phone into the ocean, we are both being bought out of our joint contracts and getting new phones. I am currently working away from home and my pc so I can't load any FLAC files up to try and our provider wants me to decide which phone I want thus my decision being made harder to make based on whether I should upgrade my music on the cell phone to the larger files. I do know that the lossless ape files I use with JRiver through my home system sound very good, but that is through an external dac. How much of that rich lossless sound will get through the tiny internal dac on the phone is another question.

Yes gizmo is a great app! I also have been using Jremote lately which has more functionality as a remote control for my pc server.
 
I would use FLAC everywhere for consistency. You will loose about 1/3 of space vs. 320kbps MP3. But now you can get phone with 64GB of internal memory and add another 64GB as microSD card. This should be enough to keep over 200 CD worth of music in the phone. Even if you use max compression option (9) when making FLAC - your phone will have no problem decoding it without glitches, but you will save few % of storage that way.
 
for_p1 said:
I would use FLAC everywhere for consistency. You will loose about 1/3 of space vs. 320kbps MP3. But now you can get phone with 64GB of internal memory and add another 64GB as microSD card. This should be enough to keep over 200 CD worth of music in the phone. Even if you use max compression option (9) when making FLAC - your phone will have no problem decoding it without glitches, but you will save few % of storage that way.
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Right now I have my music ripped to my pc in the ape format which is another lossless format similar to FLAC files. Because android won't recognized ape files I need to convert to FLAC which is no problem with JRiver. I just am looking for a bump in sound quality while on the road and am wondering if the better sounding FLAC files will be heard through the phone's internal dac. The new Samsung phones no longer have micro SD expansion so I am trying to decide in advance how much internal storage to get.
 
Alobar said:
Right now I have my music ripped to my pc in the ape format which is another lossless format similar to FLAC files. Because android won't recognized ape files I need to convert to FLAC which is no problem with JRiver. I just am looking for a bump in sound quality while on the road and am wondering if the better sounding FLAC files will be heard through the phone's internal dac. The new Samsung phones no longer have micro SD expansion so I am trying to decide in advance how much internal storage to get.
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Using APE files saves about 10% of space vs. FLAC. Native Android player does not support APE, but you can get 3rd party player app that works with it. It will save you time on transcoding. But decoding APE consumes much more CPU time than FLAC and thus affect your battery life while playing music.
 
for_p1 said:
Using APE files saves about 10% of space vs. FLAC. Native Android player does not support APE, but you can get 3rd party player app that works with it. It will save you time on transcoding. But decoding APE consumes much more CPU time than FLAC and thus affect your battery life while playing music.
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Good to know about the ape files can work with Android with 3rd party players. I use an app called Power amp but haven't explored it's lossless capabilities. I understand that JRiver is working on an android app too which will no doubt have lossless options also.

My thinking is that I had better spend a little extra and buy a phone that I can get a decent selection of music in FLAC format. Probably will get a 64 gb model at this point.
 
I use my phone to listen with sound canceling headphones (Able Planet) or car speakers when driving long distances. Mp3 320kbps is okay, just looking for something better but that may not be possible due to tinny or edgy sounding cell phone internal dacs. That will no doubt vary from brand to brand. My problem is that I haven't experimented enough to know where the sound degradation comes from. Is it the mp3 format or the internal dac? Probably both to some degree. I do still have some mp3 files on my computer servers and they don't sound that bad, just not as good as lossless. However when I do listen to mp3 on my home system through the phone, the experience is far less enjoyable. Perhaps that is my clue that a tiny dac in a smartphone will always be the bottleneck to better sounding music regardless of the file format.
 
The other day I was listening to a pair of small Audience speakers through an iPhone with mp3 music and I thought these $1500 speakers sounded pretty much terrible. Then we plugged them into a great sounding Decware tube amp and cd source and wow! What an amazing difference! No doubt the amp was a big factor but has me wondering if the phone we were using really sounded that bad or was it something else. Regardless, the phone is about my only practical choice for music on the go.

Just curious, does anyone know of a new model smartphone that does music better than the others? Or they all about the same?
 
Alobar said:
The other day I was listening to a pair of small Audience speakers through an iPhone with mp3 music and I thought these $1500 speakers sounded pretty much terrible. Then we plugged them into a great sounding Decware tube amp and cd source and wow! What an amazing difference! No doubt the amp was a big factor but has me wondering if the phone we were using really sounded that bad or was it something else. Regardless, the phone is about my only practical choice for music on the go.

Just curious, does anyone know of a new model smartphone that does music better than the others? Or they all about the same?
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Sony used to be the best, probably still is. But you have to get top of the line model which seems to be Z3+ now.
 
Alobar said:
Right now I have my music ripped to my pc in the ape format which is another lossless format similar to FLAC files. Because android won't recognized ape files I need to convert to FLAC which is no problem with JRiver.
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Since you're already converting, I would convert to V2 VBR mp3 for portable devices. I agree with Joe--the resolution of a phone or car stereo is typically not good enough to justify FLAC, IMO.
 
botrytis said:
You can change the amount of space you use with FLAC by changing the amount of compression used. Most times FLAC's will be 1/2 the size of a WAV file.
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?

It's my understanding FLAC is more or less FLAC. The only option you have is setting the conversion speed, and that has minimal effect on file size - just how long it takes to convert as the higher settings use stronger algorithms for quality control. Even that's minimal, so I just leave it at the default.

I store everything in FLAC on the server, then use the "5 Star" tag to sort and export the good stuff to an MP3 directory. Got a neat little freeware called FlashShuffler I use to pick a random selection of music on a thumb drive. Just gotta point it at the directory, tell it how much room you got to work with, and let it do it's thing. The original FLAC files remain untouched, and the MP3's are easy enough to update as the library grows.

PS ... 8 or 16 gigs of MP3's is a LOT of music. Good enough for a cross country trip on a motorcycle anyway.
 
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If you're not obligated to get a Samsung phone in your new deal you could check out the HTC, either M8 or newer M9. I have the 8 & it does pretty well as far as phone SQ goes. I noticed in the link provided by botrytis that it came in with the top ranking of the ones listed. I think, but haven't checked out the thread for awhile, that it ranks near the top of this discussion: http://www.head-fi.org/t/662095/best-smartphone-for-audiophile also. The HTC's aren't the best if you're looking for a great camera but I've always been a sound over sight type so it's not a big deal to me.
 
Tbone289 said:
Since you're already converting, I would convert to V2 VBR mp3 for portable devices. I agree with Joe--the resolution of a phone or car stereo is typically not good enough to justify FLAC, IMO.
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I'm also taking into consideration the amount of available storage space. A TB or more of FLAC files won't fit on any portable player I'm aware of. You can however get a lot of MP3's on a 256GB micro SD card.
 
Don't know if an HTC phone is an option, but if it is, I can recommend the HTC 1 Harman Kardon edition. I think mine sounds very good.
 
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