Playing Flac Downloads on a CD Player?

[Guest]

Hello technological wizards,

I'm considering downloading a couple of Pinnock Mozart Symphonies which are available in Flac or MP3, and was debating whether it would make sense just to download in MP3 and burn to disc as I have done many times before.

I have a few questions:

1) If I download Flac files, is it a faff to burn them to disc?

2) If I burn them to disc, is my car CD player likely to be able to play them? Even my Denon hi-fi only lists MP3 and WMA.

[rauschwerk]

If you burn Flac files to disc then they will be in the standard CD format and will play on any CD player. I use a free app called Burrrn which seems very easy to use, though to play Flac files on your PC you will need something else (Winamp I think).

[MrGongGong]

All depends on what you burn them as
So if you burn them as CDA then they should play in an ordinary CD player

if you burn them as MP3 you might be able to play them but not all players support that
etc etc etc

(Audacity will play FLAC files as will many other editors)

[Bryn]

After downloading the FLAC files you simply convert them to PCM (WAV on a Windoze machine, or AIFF on a Mac) and burn to a standard CD-R audio disc. If you are still with XP, FLAC Frontend does the conversion nicely, however, it is not Windoze 7 friendly, so do a bit of Googling for an appropriate decoder, (for instance, http://www.simplehelp.net/2008/11/06...t-audio-files/ ).

[johnb]

A quick Google reveals this helpful guide to using burrrn, recommended by rauschwerk:

http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/burn_flac_files_as_audio_cd_with_freeware.cfm

You should then be able to play the burned CD on any CD player.

If you want to play the FLAC files on your PC there are many music players, including Foobar, Winamp, etc, etc.

[Thropplenoggin]

Thanks, all, for the very useful advice.

In your experience, then, and given the choice, would you always choose Flac over MP3, despite the price difference?

[Bryn]

Thanks, all, for the very useful advice.

In your experience, then, and given the choice, would you always choose Flac over MP3, despite the price difference?

Unfortunately that is more difficult to answer than many realise. As a 'rule of thumb'. yes, but it does rather depend on the material. If the music is really sparse, FLACs can actually end up smaller than a high data rate mp3 (some Morton Feldman works, for instance). Furthermore, an mp3 at 320kbps has a fairly high lossless component. As a general rule, however, for superior audio quality, stick with FLAC, ALAC or WMA lossless.

[MrGongGong]

This might be of interest (though not aimed at "Classical Music")

http://pitchfork.com/features/paper-trail/8913-jonathan-sterne/