what's the best way to play flac on ipod touch

to expand the title, what is the BEST, quality loseless, full potential way, to play flac, and many other audio files(all, if possible) on the ipod touch!??

ipod touch is simply amazing, with millions of apps. I do not want to get a cowon iaudio, or iriver to play flac files and paying the same for their players just because they got better EQ, audio quality, and many many supported formats. I love apple products, but their ipod mp3 player line just needs better and wider formats supported in my opinion.

I want the ipod touch to do the same, i am an audiophile so i expect alot from my gadgets and equipments.

Thanks!

P.S. does the Zune HD support flac natively, if not, how do u play flac on the zune HD also, <--- thanks!

 

Well, no matter what you do software wise, an ipod touch can never match the audio quality of a cowon. The thing you can do however, is getting an external amp, mod your ipod touch line out so that it doesn't go through the horrible ipod touch's sound processing, and connect it to an external amp.

 

can a FiiO work? i saw a FiiO E5s on ebay before, didn't know what it was exactly for, maybe you know? can it dramatically increase the audio quality then?
http://cgi.ebay.ca/FiiO-E5-HEADPHON...er_MP3_Player_Accessories&hash=item3caca798d7

 

An example, there's many altenatives, like imod etc:
FS: iPod Modification Service (iMod, DIYpod, GMOD)

Not sure if it works for ipod touch though, and it's not going to be cheap as well, a good amp could cost 400-1000 dollars, and that's not even including the cost of modding the line out.

 

wow thanks alot for this, i hope i will get the best from my itouch. i will look into it. so, how do you play flac on the itouch?

 

I use a Cowon D2+. Modding the ipod touch etc just to get the same sound quality as a Cowon cost too much.

Also, what earphone are you using, if you are just using the default ipod earphone there's really no point in doing this.

 

i usually use my sennheiser cx500 for mobile or when travelling because they're light, tight sound isolation, and has a volume control, other than that i use shures scl4 i got from my relatives(i really adore and dear it)

i can really hear the difference bwteen from my pc's soundcard to the ipod touch when listening to flac or at least 320kpbs.

i also prefer earbuds than on the ear/on the head/over the head type headphones although i noe they're better but i just like earbuds (in ear) better.

 

Personally, I use a westone UM2 with my Cowon. IMO, it's cheaper to just get a new Cowon for sound quality than to mod the ipod, and use the ipod touch purely for your applications.

 

The iPhone 3GS apparently have a pretty good sound card which is what I use with my UM3X.

IPod cannot recognize FLAC files, you have to therefore convert it into Apples Lossless File and then put it on your IPOD.

 

get the freeware called DoubleTwist and use it to transfer your music to your ipod. It will autoconvert it to AppleLossless for you, so that all you have to think about is drag and drop same as you do with a Cowon.

That said, the transfer takes some time because of the encoding that has to be done. Then again, Itunes transfer is not exactly speedy either.

I've been a longterm Cowon fan and I still am. But I would have to say that the sound quality of the latest Iphone and Ipod is top notch, giving nothing away to Cowon in sound quality. But Apple is of course never fair to the conumers and the lock out many sound formats eg there is no reason for "Apple lossless" to exist when FLAC has been there and is superb. The Cowons give you the freedom to use what you want and better compatibility with other file formats eg Ogg Vorbis and so on.

 

All lossless formats are exactly equivalent in sound quality, and you can convert from one to another losslessly. So, having to convert from FLAC to Apple Lossless may be a little annoying, but you don't really lose anything. If the sound is different from a device that plays another lossless format, it's due to the device hardware, not the file format.

File format is not the only, or even the biggest, factor in sound quality. The sound chip and other circuitry in the device, an external amp if used, and the earphones will all have big effects on sound quality.

You might be interested in looking at the forums at www.head-fi.org ... they have extensive discussions about the sound quality of just about every playback device you can find.

 

the truth is, if you are using sub $100 headphones, the limiting audio quality factor is the headphones, not:

- lossy files (but high bitrate / proper encodes)
- the ipod itself

you might think you can hear the difference between 320 kbps and flac, but you can't. guarantee you that if you took a blind test, you would fail.

anyway, head over to head-fi, as said above.

 

The real issue with all these lossless formats is time, convience and lock-in. If you are going to manually convert all your files to Apple lossless it will take you quite a lot of time. And then if you want to use those files later on some other device, well either you now pay an Apple tax for that device or you gotta burn more time converting back to FLAC. And you better still have Itunes or you spend a lot of time trying to read that file to convert it to WAV and then to whatever you really need.

That is why I say Apple did an evil thing by blocking FLAC and creating Apple lossless. Its a waste of consumers time.

So in the end I would suggest looking carefully at the time factor. That is why I suggested double twist because it is a program that allows you to use the Apple device but at least it keeps your base files in the open format (FLAC) and only converts as you need it and automatically to save you the time of doing it.

 

If you dont like the Apple hardware all that much then why are you taking it as a starting point for your search. Apple product is the worst starting point if you are looking for a product that you can easily modify without effort or cost. They deliberatetely make it hard or sometimes impossible, so that you are forced to follow their rules and their financial ecosystem.

So IMO if you assume ipod then youre gonna have to deal with conversion as your path of least resistance. Ap

Or just get a Cowon and you dont to do anything more but enjoy your FLAC files.

But there is no easy path to this if you insist on taking Apple as a starting point.

 

yea, a jailbreak + vlc4iphone would do it.