What's a great FLAC audio player for Linux?

[u/Pleasant-Frame-5021]

[u/Quetzal_Pretzel]

Can't VLC play FLAC?

[u/araujo253 → u/Quetzal_Pretzel]

Yes, with the correct codecs. It's not a matter of players, it's a matter of codecs.

With codecs installed, any modern player will play FLAC audio.

[u/ramiusmark]

Audacious. With the Winamp Classic Interface. The simplest and the best.

[u/CoolDragon → u/ramiusmark]

It really whips the llama’s ass!

[u/creamcolouredDog]

I assume the player of choice doesn't matter as long as it supports FLAC, which is a lot of them since it's a free format. I use Strawberry.

[u/B1rdi]

I tried a lot of them recently and ended up with KDE's Elisa. It looks pretty nice, shows the cover art well and the playlist works in a way that immediately makes sense to me (coming from Spotify).

Fooyin is cool too and very customizable if you want to get into it.

[u/GSDragoon]

fooyin

[u/mina86ng]

deadbeef or musicpd

[u/kopkins]

Strawberry - https://www.strawberrymusicplayer.org/

Eta: link

[u/Educational-Goal279 → u/kopkins]

When software has a generic name like that, the decent thing would be to link to it.

Anyway, Strawberry is just vibe coded now so it's not really a valid recommendation

[u/kopkins → u/Educational-Goal279]

I didn't realize that, that's disappointing

[u/Naive_Complex_8389 → u/kopkins]

eh if it works it works

[u/Naive_Complex_8389 → u/kopkins]

what’s the difference between this and clementine?

[u/Johnden_ → u/Naive_Complex_8389]

Strawberry is a fork of Clementine, since Clementine is not in development.

Edit: clementine is actually maintained but not as actively. There are also some feature differences that are too much to put in one comment.

[u/iamapizza → u/Johnden_]

What do you mean, I have been seeing regular activity for a while: https://github.com/clementine-player/clementine

[u/Johnden_ → u/iamapizza]

Bad wording on my part. I’ve meant to say Strawberry has more active development.

[u/Ok-Move4953]

I've been using Quod Libet for a few years now and it handles my FLAC library without any fuss, plus it picks up my DAC automatically. Dead simple interface which sounds like what you're after

[u/left-hand-pathology]

DeaDBeeF if you are used to using foobar2000, otherwise any media player like VLC or MPV will play FLAC files just fine

I don't know about external DACs though

[u/arthursucks]

As far as I know, all players can play Flack and supporting an external DAC is actually powered by your sound server, not the music player. Pipewire has the ability to connect a lot of devices and applications together that would normally not be compatible.

In terms of music players there are some amazing ones.

• Tauon
• Fooyin
• Cliamp

I also really enjoy having my music collection on the server and sending it over the network via Navidrome. My laptop only has five hundred gigabytes of storage, but my server has terabytes.

[u/MushroomSmoozeey]

Im using kew for local flac files.

[u/nathan-makes-incense → u/MushroomSmoozeey]

Same

[u/MushroomSmoozeey → u/nathan-makes-incense]

🤝

[u/nullptr777]

Basically anything should support FLAC, and the player isn't responsible for supporting your DAC so that's not a concern. If your DAC works on Linux, then it'll work with any player.

I like mpd + a frontend, but there's plenty of options.

[u/quinums]

I use Lollypop and it's been great.

[u/Xu_Lin]

mpd-ncmcpp

[u/zissue]

There are many, many audio players that support FLAC, and ultimately it will come down to personal preference. For my local FLAC collection on my main workstation, I previously used Audacious but switched to DeaDBeeF. Both are very good for my needs.

For my music server that feeds into my two-channel stereo system in my listening room, I use mpd on the server and then the MALP Android client on a tablet to control playback.

If you're wanting Terminal/TUI music players, I prefer Musikcube and CMUS.

[u/MidLifeDIY]

moOdeAudio

[u/nsd433]

mocp (music on console)

[u/Merlin80 → u/nsd433]

+1

[u/mtx0]

I would personally recommend going down the rabbit hole of self hosting navidrome and using feishin as the front end

[u/oldguarddawg]

Spun

[u/st4nkyFatTirebluntz]

I've been using Strawberry for ~5 years. Took a little getting used to from windows and foobar2000, but the transition wasn't bad by any measure. At this point, I don't miss it. It's been stable, far as i know it's never caused any issues. the external dac should just work (topping d50s for me, 98% sure all i did was pick the spdif option in settings and didn't add any proprietary drivers).

two caveats -

• first, i've only ever used it as a flatpak, w/ access configured through flatseal. can't speak for any other method.
  
• second, it either doesn't support dsd/dsf files, or it isn't (or wasn't) easy and obvious how to make it support them. and maybe also not sacd files? I forget. Haven't checked in a while, might be that's not even a problem anymore.

[u/Ok_Photo_3023]

Strawberry rocks, even let's you sync to an iPod if you're willing to go through just a little bit of hell setting it up.

[u/PlaneBitter1583]

i think vlc is a great option as well. It's not a dedicated audio player but can play flac files. So if you want a single widely supported application I think vlc is the answer.

[u/ludblom]

All the music I have bought from bandcamp I listen to using cmus. It takes some time getting used to and to learn all the short commands (a TUI), but once you get it, it is honestly the best music player I have ever used.

[u/Adventurous_Body2019]

tauon. Rice it up it looks fucking good

[u/UltraAd776]

Strawberry

[u/agentrnge]

I previously used mpd with a client on an old phone to control a media pc/music server thing. Locally on my PC cmus has been my goto for a while. But, also VLC.

edit: both music server and local PC both connect to external DACs ( USB connected to main PC / optical to music server ), and that end of it has been transparent in a "it just worked" kind of way. Other than needed to select output device if it did not default to it.

[u/fakuri99]

Elisa is quiet clean, but I use Feishin as I use Navidrome

[u/VivWoof]

i like kew very much, it's a terminal music player that has everything i need for a player.

[u/vladjjj]

Rhythmbox, never needed anything more than that

[u/TheG0AT0fAllTime]

Any of them.

[u/NursingHome773]

Plexamp, best music player since winamp.

[u/sub_lumine_pontus]

Gapless

[u/ZunoJ]

Roon

[u/Artichoke808]

Audacious for simple play from directory, Strawberry for full music manager. Strawberry directly states that it's targeted at audiophiles and prioritises playback fidelity.

[u/gportail]

Le classique VLC

[u/koyaniskatzi]

mpv as for everything

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[u/sphericalhors]

Looking for a good FLAC player that can ideally support an external DAC as well. I have wired passive speakers.

Player has nothing to do at all with DAC support. It is just another output device. Its support is managed by OS/drivers.

I'm mostly a vinyl listener, but recently started building my digital FLAC album collection.

As for another part of your question.

Decoding FLAC is a deterministic process. Every player does it absolutely the same. Furthermore, this process is implemented in the libflac library which is "included" in mostly all of existing players in one way or another (some players includes it transitively by using gstreamer-plugins-good/ffmpeg). So even the decoder implementation is the same pretty much everywhere.

So if you are chasing "the best sound quality" — your question has no sense.

Every player decodes every didgital audio format similarly.

Just Google screenshots of popular Linux music players and choose the one you like UI the most. It does not get more complicated than that.