FLAC & the iPhone?

Twill

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Hi,

I'm thinking of acquiring an iPhone. I don't currently have other Apple products and am worried about the 'walled garden' effect of Apple's formats for music etc. I don't want to spark the Apple vs Android debate as such, but I'm interested in what kind of inconviniences I might expect if I choose an iPhone whilst refusing to Appleize the rest of my house, particularly in terms of music.

For example, I have my entire music collection in FLAC at the mo. I had thought this would be an issue, but a quick Google has lead me to apps like 'FLAC Player', which would appear to offer FLAC playback, inc features like Airplay. This seems pretty positive. I don't want to get in to ALAC format or anything, because no one else in my house uses Apple products, and the music needs to be accessible to all.

How would trying to use my iPhone to 'portable'ize' my FLAC collection work against me? What couldn't I do? And would WAV be an even more universal and workable option?

I just don't want to get in to it, only to find I can't use my iPhone to do X, Y,or Z key music playback tasks because I have the wrong music format.

Any thoughts welcome.
 

Timbot

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I've got the 4G which I mainly use Apple Lossles files on (but then I've had an iPod for many years...)

I have downloaded the appropriately named "FLAC player" app (I think it was about £7) and it seems to be pretty easy to use and seems to play FLAC files without any difficulty (I've only got 2 FLAC files though!)
 

AnotherJoe

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The quadcore androids arrive next month for around £450 for the very topend ones(simfree). You might want to wait for these before deciding on a phone.

A quadcore 1.5Ghz phone with 1280x720 resolution and screen sizes from 4-4.7 inches for £450 sounds pretty good.
 

Paul.

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Buying an iPhone on its own is a bit like having Voltrons left leg. Its more powerful the more stuff you bolt on to it. If you have no interest in buying in to the ecosystem and are judging the iPhone on its own, its a pretty tough sell tbh.

On the other hand, if the FLAC players can do Airplay, thats the biggest feature right there. You wouldn't be able to use Music Match, but you may not want that anyway if you only want lossless on the phone. Are you planning on getting the 64GB? How large is your library? If your library is a lot bigger than your phone memory I would recommend it.

One option could be filling your phone to 70% with FLAC, doing a one time encode to AAC to use Match, upload to the iTunes server then delete the AAC files. That way you can download any music missing when it takes your fancy.

If you have a Mahoosive library and want access to it all in lossless, (and you don't want to buy in to the Apple Ecosystem) an Android with a card slot would probably be the better answer.
 

Lee H

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I did a batch conversion to ALAC for my iPhone. The FLAC player is OK, but not the easiest when it comes to syncing tracks (IMO)
 

Twill

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Paul Hobbs said:
Buying an iPhone on its own is a bit like having Voltrons left leg. Its more powerful the more stuff you bolt on to it. If you have no interest in buying in to the ecosystem and are judging the iPhone on its own, its a pretty tough sell tbh.

On the other hand, if the FLAC players can do Airplay, thats the biggest feature right there. You wouldn't be able to use Music Match, but you may not want that anyway if you only want lossless on the phone. Are you planning on getting the 64GB? How large is your library? If your library is a lot bigger than your phone memory I would recommend it.

One option could be filling your phone to 70% with FLAC, doing a one time encode to AAC to use Match, upload to the iTunes server then delete the AAC files. That way you can download any music missing when it takes your fancy.

If you have a Mahoosive library and want access to it all in lossless, (and you don't want to buy in to the Apple Ecosystem) an Android with a card slot would probably be the better answer.

Cheers Paul, this is all pretty useful.

I like the iPhone because of the simplicity of 'it just works'. I fear that Android is a diverse and dispersed beast, with associated potential glitches etc.

That said, I am not a natural iPerson. I resent automation. I hate the way MS Word takes a asterisk and turns it in to a bullet point. i am scared, for this reason, of iTunes. I like to drag and drop. I like the fact I can use my phone as a hard drive just by plugging in a USB. I don't use album art, or tags, or anything for my computer music. I just navigate my music collection in Windows Explorer which, for me, is just a large electronic CD rack. I don't really tinker with it. At the mo', I just paste albums across in to my Nokia easy peasy. I am aware that these are all very unAppley traits.

However, I do like the sound of IOS in terms of stability, and the apps are reputidly better. More importantly than any of that, I need a new music option in my bedroom and kitchen, and the docks out there are pretty attractive, and make much more sense for Apple over Android with their docking functions, remote controls etc etc.

Would I be able to stomach iTunes in order to have an iPhone? I'm not sure. Does it really mess with your life and run as appaulingly on Windows as people suggest?

Oh, and in answer to your other question, my FLAC library is about 175GB at the mo', so I wouldn't be getting it all on to any kind of portable.

I think an Android suits me better, but the docks and sundry musical hardware accessories for iPhones do exactly what I want.

Cheers.
 

Paul.

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Sounds like a you want a Jailbroken iPhone. Still very stable, access the to the ecosystem, but will give you plenty to fettle with and let you use it as a mass storage device.
 

Twill

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Hmm. Quite possibly. Although oddly i don't really want to tinker. That's part of what I like about the sound of IOS, that it's slick and you just leave it alone. I'm not a great delver in to the details of Windows. What I don't want though is where Apple take it too far the other way, and don't let you do things you naturally might want to, like copy and paste a music file to your device without having to have iTunes intermediate on everything for you.

Plus which, there's no suggestion I'll have an Appletastic household any time soon. My wife may well never convert, and I don't want the hastle of having multiple format music libraries: FLAC for her device, ALAC for mine. I guess I could just have it all in WAV on a big NAS drive and be more selective about what goes on the portables.

Read an interesting review of a Philips Android dock on another site which was basically saying docks will never work for Android as they do for Apple because there is just too much variety in the hardware. It's a real catch 22; the strength is the weakness of each system and vice versa.
 

Lee H

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Don't feel too bound to iTunes beyond the initial set-up. You can manage your music using MediaMonkey and - if you use the paid version - will convert from FLAC to AAC/ALAC/MP3 etc on the fly.

I've had both Androd and iOS over the last couple of years and each has its merits. I actually found I was constantly tinkering with Android, messing with widgets etc. Ultimately though, it came down to the keyboard. I much preferred the Apple keyboard.

As I said though, I did a big batch conversion using dbPowerAmp to get an ALAC version of my FLAC library. When I rip a CD now, it rips 2 versions in to 2 different folders.
 

AnotherJoe

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once the 128 & 256GB microSDs cards finally make an appearance things will get better. At the moment the max microSD capacity is a mere 64GB.
 

Twill

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Lee H said:
Don't feel too bound to iTunes beyond the initial set-up. You can manage your music using MediaMonkey and - if you use the paid version - will convert from FLAC to AAC/ALAC/MP3 etc on the fly.

I've had both Androd and iOS over the last couple of years and each has its merits. I actually found I was constantly tinkering with Android, messing with widgets etc. Ultimately though, it came down to the keyboard. I much preferred the Apple keyboard.

As I said though, I did a big batch conversion using dbPowerAmp to get an ALAC version of my FLAC library. When I rip a CD now, it rips 2 versions in to 2 different folders.

Thanks. Interesting advice. It's hard to know about this stuff from a distance, but sometimes it seems like if you get in to Apple you are caught in an inflexible web, with no choices.

So you don't 'need' to use iTunes to transfer music from your Win7 PC or NAS to the iPhone in the first place, and managed what media content comes on ad off it?

Also, as an aside, can you pull video you've recorded on your iPhone off and transfer it to your PC for archiving, and if so, what format's it in?

Thanks again. Being very cautious but can't afford to make a mistake really, financially!
 

Lee H

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Correct, you don't "need" to. Apple is a bit of a walled garden in terms of its eco-system, but its not really anything to be scared by. The big win is its usability. Almost anyone can use an iProduct right off the bat and there is oodles of support. Mine went faulty recently (the lock button stuck), so I I took it to an Apple store and left 10 minutes later with an exchanged phone. No hassle, no sending off for repair, just swapped.

I do use iTunes now to manage my phone, but rarely fire it up. Things like Spotify mean that more and more, when I fancy a change of tracks I just use Spotify.

As for the video, you'll probably need iTunes for that. Up until a few years back you could view your iDevice as an external HDD, but no longer. There are software packages out there that can enable this though.

If you're unsure, buy online from a reputable retailer. This way, you get the protection of distance selling regs and can return it.
 

professorhat

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Twill said:
Also, as an aside, can you pull video you've recorded on your iPhone off and transfer it to your PC for archiving, and if so, what format's it in?

There may be an easier way to do it, but if you just install the Dropbox app on your iPhone, you can easily move photos and videos to your Dropbox account, then pull them from here to your PC (or set the folder to automatically sync to your PC). Once that's done, just delete them from your Dropbox folder. With Dropbox you get 5 GB worth of space for free so this will cost you nothing.

Videos on the iPhone 4S are in the Quicktime .mov format. I've just checked and this will playback natively in Windows Media Player on Windows 7.
 
A

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Do not feel too bound to iTunes beyond the initial set-up. You can manage your music using MediaMonkey and - if you use the paid version - will convert from FLAC to AAC/ALAC/MP3 etc on the fly.
 

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