Iphone interesting discovery.....Playing Flac on iPhone

[sperandeo]

I have recently made a rather interesting discovery. I got a FREE iphone app called ZumoCast. ZumoCast will stream or let you view anything on your Mac (yes they have a PC version). I have a few folders on my desktop with flac files in them. From my iphone (wifi or 3g) I can access these desktop flac files and play them from my iphone perfectly. I have tried to convert these flac files with the usual conversion program I use to get them to Aiff and then I convert them to Lossless in iTunes, but these flac files after being converted to Aiff are 4608Kbps. When I convert these files to Apple Lossless (from within itunes) the bit rate goes down to 2609kbps, and you can't transfer a song with this high bitrate to your ipod.

When I try to get info on the flac file from VLC media player here is the info:
Codec: Flac
Channel Stereo
Sample Rate: 96000
Bits per sample 24

I got very excited thinking that I was streaming 96/24 flac files. But then I tried some other songs that showed the same readings (in VLC) as above and they wouldn't play.

The first flac song that did play file size was 115mb for a 5 minute song.
The second song with again the same VLC reading was 302mb for a 5 minute song.

So I know that I'm able to stream flac files on a standard iPhone, but I'm not sure what the highest bit rate truly is regardless of what VLC is trying to tell me.

Can anyone clear this up for me??

Thanks

[Racio]

-edited-

[MonJovi]

FLAC > AIFF > ALAC ?

I don't think this is a good idea 

Although AIFF is another lossless non-compressed format (similar to WAV), don't you think the 2-step conversion process will affect the SQ?

[dinkoy]

FLAC > AIFF > ALAC ?

I don't think this is a good idea 

Although AIFF is another lossless non-compressed format (similar to WAV), don't you think the 2-step conversion process will affect the SQ?

It does affect file integrity imo.

[Racio]

^ AIFF is NOT a lossless format, ALAC is Apple's true equivalent lossless format for FLAC. :-)

I stand corrected, AIFF is indeed lossless. Perhaps iTune's conversion is inaccurate and causes integrity degradation.

[Mochan]

You have to stream it? If you cant store it onto the phone to take with you mobile I don't see much point. Or did I not understand that right?

Oh wait I get it now, you can stream it over your 3G connection, right? Still a bit battery intensive I think....

[MonJovi]

I don't mean to be rude here, but... whats the point of audio streaming between a desktop & iPhone? This means your audio experience is still Mac/PC dependent. So why not just play them directly from your desktop/laptop instead? Of course there is the 20 meters portability radius trade-off but it's worth it especially that your FLACs would even sound better on foobar 

[Mikado]

surely the quality of the file has the possiblity of degrading a bit but having a sound/music server is actually pretty handy for listening music on the go everywhere without lugging a laptop, + it doesn't consume any disk space, setting one up could be a chore though if you don't know what you're doing.

[MonJovi]

Pardon me but... is the audio steaming here via ad hoc connection?

[Mikado]

most likely, but it can also be implemented via infrastructure mode.

[sperandeo]

I can stream the files from anywhere (not only at home), i use it in the car. As long as there is a 3G (cellular) or wifi signal I can stream from my mac at home. In terms of quality, the app ZumoCast has a setting for "high quality audio on 3g" and I'm telling you the quality is amazing. I would really like to know if there is any quality loss. The amazing thing is I am able to leave flac files alone and have them play on my un-modded iphone/ipod touch/ipad.

[Dawindyk]

FLAC > AIFF > ALAC ?

I don't think this is a good idea 

Although AIFF is another lossless non-compressed format (similar to WAV), don't you think the 2-step conversion process will affect the SQ?

Why do You think it should affect SQ? If it's a proper conversion You can convert unlimited times without compromising SQ

[MonJovi]

Why do You think it should affect SQ? If it's a proper conversion You can convert unlimited times without compromising SQ

Well of course, as long as the original quality is preserved during the conversion 

And thats where the problem lies - accurary in conversion. I'm just thinking that the process mentioned above which uses 2 different applications and 2 different file format outputs might cause the "improper" conversion due to differences in settings, output quality etc.

Some members here (and from other forums) can attest to the fact that the lossless conversion of iTunes is not as accurate as other media conversion apps do (eg: EAC, dBpoweramp). So, why not just use a good app to directly convert FLAC to ALAC? 

[sperandeo]

It seems like two topics are being mixed up a little in this tread..lol.

I am no longer converting flac to Aiff to Apple lossless. Even though I don't think there was any loss (from what i can hear).
I am now going directly from flac to apple lossless via XLD.

But what I'm finding interesting is the direct stream of a flac file to my iphone. If the iphone is playing it (which an ipod can't), then I'm guessing it is truly playing the flac file unaltered.

[erwinandrew]

There is already a native vlc player app for the iphone where you could play your FLAC files.(for non-jailbroken iphones)
I haven't tried this because i already use a FLAC player app for my jailbroken device.

What i did before was convert my flac files to ALAC using "itunesencodenet" or just rip them into alac using "dbpoweramp".