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Topic: The possibility of streaming FLAC music? (Read 16466 times) previous topic - next topic
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The possibility of streaming FLAC music?

Currently, I am curious of how to stream the FLAC music to users.

As you guys know, the mp3 file can be streamed to users, which means user can play the mp3 file as receiving it gradually instead of getting the whole mp3 file.

Is there any similar possible way to do the same streaming operation to FLAC file?

Thanks.


The possibility of streaming FLAC music?

Reply #2
Maybe tell us the purpose, then we consider how sensible is that. Anyway, Icecast should be the solution. But we also need source client for Icecast. I don't really know the one capable of encapsulating and streaming Ogg-FLAC. Those provided by Xiph.org (ices and ezstream) don't seem to support FLAC.

Ices - streams Ogg Vorbis or MP3
Ezstream - "Supported media formats for streaming are MP3, Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora"

That's a pity, because it looks like it suppots FLAC as an input, but then  transcodes to one of the formats above.


The possibility of streaming FLAC music?

Reply #4
Many ways to stream FLAC. GIYF.

I guess the more interesting question is whether you can do it under a bunch of constraints (on the hardware used on both ends, on your budget, etc.). On both the server and the client side, there are a lot more devices that can handle MP3 than FLAC. So again, the question becomes whether you can go with FLAC under constraints on your setup.


Yes, Google is a good way to learn something. But I do not find too much useful materials for me to understand how to stream a flac file. Maybe, the searching method I used is not so smart.

1. actually there is a well-known music player which can play not only normal mp3/aac lossy music, but also can play ape/flac lossless music files. 
So, playing software in the user side is not the problem. Besides, our first goal is to satisfy the users of us who have installed our pc/mobile music software.
2. budget is not the problem neither. Cause we kind of have the proper CDN network, server sources, etc, there is no much extra money to be spent for streaming flac file specifically.
Finally, what we have to face to is how to make the flac streaming work!

I really hope there is a reference example for me to do this thing. Maybe, some one of you can leave me some hints for doing this. Thanks.

The possibility of streaming FLAC music?

Reply #5
Well, the above linked radio FLAC stream is working quite well for me in Foobar. Only thing missing is metadata.

Unless you want to stream inside the browser, in which case I guess you might need something Flash based..


The possibility of streaming FLAC music?

Reply #7
I've streamed FLAC (only a quick test mind) using Subsonic to my iPhone running iSub. There is a web based browser too that I guess should work.
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