Flac software guides

Would be interesting to hear what people use to play their music. Foobar, MediaMonkey, Musicbee, Plex.
Guides on how to get the most from the programs.

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I do like Zeos foobar setup video because it is straight forward:

BUT there is so much more you can do when you get columns ui plugin installed all of which can take a lot of time to setup and the top horizontal/vertical separators are not always easy to understand or visualize when you are trying to move items around.

And yes you can do transparency with Columns UI whether it behaves 100% I am not sure!

I can look at helping by put together a guide or providing a backup copy of my layout.xml file so others can import it and play from there.

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Just foobar and wasapi. I use Poweramp on my phone.

I rip CDs to FLAC and transcode to ALAC to use in iTunes. This is actually a fairly intricate process that includes scanning artwork, accuraterip verification, cataloging and tagging with MusicBrainz, etc. I’m thinking about creating a thread to describe it since it may be useful to others. I have over 3,000 albums and it helps to keep things organized.

iTunes is used for playback on my main computers. Other computers in the house can access the library with iTunes Home Sharing.

For portable playback, I sync an “In Rotation” playlist to my Android phone using iSyncr and use Rocket Player for playback.

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For organization I use JRiver, it has tools to easily organize the files, and to handle the metadata. Once the files are ok, I use Roon for reproduction, Roon doesn’t need much configuration, it just works, has a nice interface and integrates with Tidal which is nice. The only issue with Roon is that it’s crazy expensive. JRiver is also nice for reproduction, but the UI is not as nice as Roon’s.

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I use DOPAMINE on windows. It’s just really nice. On my phone I use the stock LG music app but on other phones I use n7 player. Honestly these 2 have been the best. Never was able to use the apple one for pc because it doesn’t work with flacs. Oh and the BEST tag editor when dealing with FLAC files is mp3 tag. Super amazing

Musicbee for playback, library organization, and syncing portable players. Musicbrainz Picard for tagging. EAC for ripping.

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+1 for MusicBrainz Picard.

I personally use AIMP for my FLACs and DSDs. It has a ton of extensions, supports an extended range of formats, has plenty of filters and EQ is quite easy and detailed with some extensions. Also has a wide range of skins available to suit your tastes.

I use foobar to rip CDs to FLAC.
on the Android Samsung S8+ I use USB Audio Player Pro for playback over ifi xDSD with OTG Cable , Earstudio ES 100(LDAC BT Codec) or FiiO BTR3(LDAC BT Cocec)

This is my current setup in foobar on my main PC

I have a slightly tweaked one I use for the tv in the living room

Here is a picture of the layout config which as stated is always the hardest to get right:

I use Dopamine. I have literally tried everything and Dopamine is currently my favorite by far.

I use dBpoweramp to convert to flac.

I rip my CDs to FLAC in Exact Audio Copy or MusicBee, depending on how EAC treats the CD then use Resilio (FKA Bittorrent Sync) to copy those files to my phone and play them in USB Audio Player Pro.

I tend to just play said CDs on ye olde Nakamichi OMS-2a when I’m home, owing to the lack of a decent streamer to connect to my amp. I do have a Plex server running but I tend to connect to it solely with my iPad so I expect there’s a bit of transcoding taking place there. Does anyone happen to know if Plex transcodes FLAC to ALAC for an iOS client?

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For linux, there’s DeaDBeeF audio player (…yeah, weird name). You choose the alsa output plug-in, select your soundcard/dac, disable ALSA resampling, and you get bitperfect audio, in 10 seconds. That’s it.

There’s also a waveform seekbar plug-in, like in foobar.

A bit off-topic: For linux, I’d advise to disable/uninstall pulseaudio at all costs. It messes with the sound in many, many obscure and twisted ways.

Nothing beats Foobar because you can mod it as you like :sunglasses:

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I use Musicbee, for pretty much everything. I’ve applied a skin to it, to match my orange-black setup, and added some other stuff.

I’ve tried other software (such as foobar) but i found these to be overall confusing, and in the end, I just wanna sit back and enjoy my music.

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I use Foobar, but i really liked the old iTunes style. Tried modding it to make foobar like it, but realised it was beter to adapt. Still have trouble addind CD covers but, in the end, it serves all my purposes

Musicbee for playback and MP3Tag for metadata and coverart.

Nice skin and setup of Foobar i would like to have it like this.
Can you share it or give me the link to add to my Foobar, please?

Tnx :wink:

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