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Topic: best virus free FLAC DirectShow filter for Windows Media Player? (Read 6019 times) previous topic - next topic
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best virus free FLAC DirectShow filter for Windows Media Player?

I was looking for a DirectShow codec to play FLAC files in WMP.

However, I noticed that a lot of web pages warn about DirectShow filter packages being a favorite delivery method for spam and viruses.

When googling for flac filters, I ran across xiph and madFLAC.  Are these trustworthy?  Any other software I should consider?

I currently play FLAC in foobar but I'd like to be able to also play in WMP without adding a bunch of junk to my computer.




best virus free FLAC DirectShow filter for Windows Media Player?

Reply #1
Xiph are most definitely trustworthy, as the developers of various popular technologies for audio and other media, including Ogg and Vorbis.

I have no idea about madFLAC, but you could try reading through its official thread, which I found after a couple of seconds on Google; if anything shady is going on (which I doubt), it’ll have been reported there.

best virus free FLAC DirectShow filter for Windows Media Player?

Reply #2
I have no idea about madFLAC, but you could try reading through its official thread, which I found after a couple of seconds on Google; if anything shady is going on (which I doubt), it’ll have been reported there.


Yep, I saw that link too but didn't click on it because the domain name had "doom9" so I just assumed it was some kind of teenage piracy site.

The #1 link above that one for madFLAC was www.free-codecs.com and I wasn't familiar enough with them to know if "free-codecs" is one of those shady groups that repackage DirectShow filters with spam.

best virus free FLAC DirectShow filter for Windows Media Player?

Reply #3
Yep, I saw that link too but didn't click on it because the domain name had "doom9" so I just assumed it was some kind of teenage piracy site.
You assumed wrongly, so now you can read all about it!

Google also describes Doom9 without you having to risk your computer, since that seems to worry you a lot: “Technical forum, mainly a DVD backup resource. Covers topics like video capture, MPEG encoding and transcoding, video filtering and format conversion.” A site that goes to such lengths to explain its origin, purpose for legal owners to make backups of their material as per fair-use practices, and even name probably can’t be run by anyone with such a short attention span as is suggested by the label “teenage piracy”.

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The #1 link above that one for madFLAC was www.free-codecs.com and I wasn't familiar enough with them to know if "free-codecs" is one of those shady groups that repackage DirectShow filters with spam.
I don’t think so. Assuming you mean viruses and not spam, the only useful result that I could find (i.e. that wasn’t, itself, spam) for "free-codecs" virus was a false positive..

You didn’t say anything about Xiph. How’s that looking to you?

best virus free FLAC DirectShow filter for Windows Media Player?

Reply #4
Yep, I saw that link too but didn't click on it because the domain name had "doom9" so I just assumed it was some kind of teenage piracy site.
You assumed wrongly, so now you can read all about it!

Google also describes Doom9 without you having to risk your computer, since that seems to worry you a lot:



Actually, I don't trust google for recursive searching like that.  Many times I type in legitimate searches for books and a piracy site such as filestube.com or ebookee ends up as the first result.  Therefore, my "point-of-entry" so-to-speak for investigating this is a known source... such as hydrogenaudio. 

(But then, how does one first get to hydrogenaudio if not through google?!?!  True enough... but I'd already been here years ago so it was a known quantity.  To me, this is a more logical place to ask about virus-free codecs rather than jump naked into the google ocean.)

It seems to bother you that I didn't get all my answers from google.  I did check google first, but I like to "cross-reference" the links I found with members' comments here.  I guess it's one of the warm and fuzzy reassurances that bare listings of google pages don't provide.

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You didn’t say anything about Xiph. How’s that looking to you?


That's what I'm going to use.  Thank you for your help.

best virus free FLAC DirectShow filter for Windows Media Player?

Reply #5
By all means, I’m glad you trust Hydrogenaudio for recommendations! And that you found something to suit you.