Below is a list of devices that support the FLAC format. So far we only have experience with the Squeezebox2 and Rio Reciever; see
reviews below. Manufacturers, if you would like your product reviewed here, feel free to
send a unit.
Home stereo:
- AudioReQuest music servers
- Avega Systems' wireless Oyster loudspeakers
- Digital Techniques' Blackbird Digital Music Players
- Escient's FireBall servers (E2-40/160/300, DVDM-300, SE-D1), networked home stereo components with hard-drives
- Hifidelio, a wireless home stereo component
- iMuse audio/video media servers
- Meda Systems' Bravo servers
- The MS300 Music Server by McIntosh Laboratory (brochure)
- Olive's Opus, Symphony, and Musica wireless digital music centers
- PhatNoise Home Digital Media Player
- PONTIS' MS330 Media Server
- Neodigits' Helios X5000 HD network media player
- Numark's DJ equipment like the HDX and CDX turntables with integrated hard drive and CD player, and the HDMIX mixer
- Rio Reciever and Dell Digital Audio Receiver via RioPlay, RRR, tRio, or xPLRio.net clients (review)
- Roku Photobridge HD via plugin
- Roku Soundbridge(*)
- SkipJam's networked audio/video devices
- Sonos Digital Music System
- Slim Devices' Transporter and Squeezebox networked audio players (review)
- Turtle Beach's AudioTron(*) via Bery Rinaldo's Samba VFS Module
- Zensonic Z500 Networked DVD Media Player
- Ziova's CS510 and CS505 network media players
- (*) device decodes FLAC to WAVE/PCM on server-side
- (**) device decodes FLAC to MP3 on server-side
Car stereo:
Portable/Handheld:
Reviews:
The main purpose of these reviews is to give an idea of how well particular devices support FLAC. Other subjective comments here are based on our general impressions and are not meant to be thorough or authoritative. We only review devices we have tested directly ourselves.
Rio Reciever: This little device is a hacker's dream. It plays audio over a network (Ethernet or HPNA) so it requires a PC to serve audio files. There are several open source clients available and since it boots its Linux distro over NFS you can write your own client. They're not made anymore but you can still find them on ebay. The main downsides: 1) small, hard-to-read LCD display; 2) FLAC support is only in third-party clients which take some work to set up.
Squeezebox2: A fantastic networked audio player. Has an excellent, easy-to-read vacuum fluorescent display, wired or wireless networking, optical and coax digital outs and analog out, a reputation for very high audio quality, multi-room synchronization, and a bunch of other features. The server-side software, SlimServer, is open-source, runs on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, etc. and has an active community. FLAC support is excellent; nearly the full
subset (e.g. sample rates up to 48kHz, 16- and 24-bits per sample) including all standard encoding modes are supported. Also supported are FLAC tags, automatic transcoding on the server of many audio formats to FLAC for transmission to the box, and external cuesheet support (internal cuesheet support is in the works).