Best/Most Currently In Use High Quality Format

[CountBiscotti]

Just starting to digitize a serious CD/LP library and it occurred to me to wonder which of the file formats would be best for rendering recordings made on acoustic instruments. That is, instruments that do a have a specific character of sound, not electronically generated noise which never had an identifiable character in the first place. Looking to replay on a high level sound system, an Android phone and a 6th generation iPod. A silly newbe question I guess, but better to ask now

[Lowlander]

You want go lossless (like FLAC) and not lossy (like MP3).

[dypsis]

FLAC

[Peke]

Hi,
FLAC is the way as it is supported by most devices. Only suggestion would be that you digitize LPs into 24/96 as they sound much better.

Unfortunately not sure if iPod support FLAC (Apple refused to include FLAC support till recently) but you can use FLAC -> ALAC conversion on sync.

[yarguy]

There are several apps available for iPhone/iPod that play FLAC. I use Onkyo's player; it downloads music files from icloud or the Adobe cloud or can be synced using iTunes file transfer. It also allows the user much better control over equalisation than Apple's Music player. There are several other apps for FLAC, as well; most allow a trial of some kind (as does Onkyo). You'll get a much better result (even with the native Apple player) if you also use a headphone amplifier/dac such as a Dragonfly (assuming you are using something better than Apple's ear buds).

Hi,
FLAC is the way as it is supported by most devices. Only suggestion would be that you digitize LPs into 24/96 as they sound much better.

Unfortunately not sure if iPod support FLAC (Apple refused to include FLAC support till recently) but you can use FLAC -> ALAC conversion on sync.

[Peke]

There are several apps available for iPhone/iPod that play FLAC.

Last time I tried Files synced with MMW were not seen in that app Something like each app used own space and could not access general media files.

[yarguy]

That's true. For iOs devices MMW cannot sync files for anything other than the native Music app (ex iTunes). The latest version of Onkyo's player syncs from several cloud sources. Vox, I believe, syncs from its own cloud service. There is at least one iOs FLAC player that includes its own syncing component. This does leave MM in the dust, I'm afraid. MM5 seems to have invested considerable resources in connecting to the MP3 only Google Play (for reasons I have never understood) instead of moving into the future with more lossless capabilities. (But MM5 has been in development for so long and still doesn't have a version that doesn't crash regularly on my Windows 10 system that I'm afraid it has been bypassed by any number of other music players.)

There are several apps available for iPhone/iPod that play FLAC.

Last time I tried Files synced with MMW were not seen in that app Something like each app used own space and could not access general media files.

[CountBiscotti]

Thanks to all for the information. It looks like FLAC and maybe leaving the old iPod + iTunes behind. Apple is bailing on iTunes anyhow, and my new Android phone supports a 256 GB memory card. And Yes, a Dragonfly is in the works!!