Playing FLAC on Mac

[Chuck S]

I’ve ripped 1,200+ albums on my B2 without any incident, and backed them up on a Seagate hard drive. I travel a lot and bring along the computer and back up drive and want to play off the Mac. I note that Quick Time will play FLAC files, but only one track at a time, not by artist, album nor playlist. That’s hugely inconvenient.

Has anyone found an app for Mac that can play without converting the FLAC files to another format? If not I’ll stick with iTunes.If you have to convert FLAC files is there an app that will do large collection converting, at the smallest level by album?

I’m aware of apps VOX, VLX and dBpoweramp but haven’t tried them. I don’t want to put any music on the cloud, but ideally play from the portable hard drive in whatever format works. Any one who’ve gone through this, your experience would be appreciated.

[Alex Blanca]

As far as I recall, VOX can play locally. I really like it because it kind of reminds me of Winamp.

Try the free version.

I don't use it with AAC files as much. For that I use iTunes most of the time.

[Mark Fishman]

VLC will play flac, and it will play whole directories or multiple selections that you drag and drop into the playlist window.

I have happily used XLD to convert between formats on a Mac for years. The only (pending) issue is that it's a 32 bit application, and rumor is that 10.14 will have less-than-stellar support for 32 bit apps.