Elmedia Player: The Best FLAC Player for Mac

Looking for a Mac FLAC player that’s easy to use, but also caters to audiophiles and music curators? Well, you’re in luck! Elmedia Player checks all those boxes, but also has cool features to spare, such as being able to watch videos in addition to listening to music. It’s also perfect for media streamers as well, working with practically any audio or video type and being able to stream that content to Chromecast, AirPlay, and DLNA devices.

Download

Purchase PRO

Best Free FLAC Player for Mac

In addition to providing great sound quality and allowing you to enhance the video sound with its many flexible settings, here are a few other great features of Elmedia Player:

Make Your Own Playlists

Want to binge all your favorite tracks without having to root through your files every time? Elmedia Player is a Mac FLAC player that lets you throw all your files into it to help you build a custom playlist, so your favorite songs are available at the click of a mouse.

Native Volume Control

When you turn up the volume in Elmedia Player, it only cranks the volume for Elmedia Player, not your other apps - so when you stop jamming, you won’t blow your ears off when you listen to a YouTube video in your web browser.

AC-3/DTS Through S/PDIF

Set up audio pass-throughs for popular hardware decoders AC3 or DTS to allow you to play FLAC on Mac with effortless surround sound.

Audio Equalizer

A built-in 10-band graphic equalizer allows you to tune your audio experience manually, or with one of the carefully-crafted presets.

Continuous Loop

Play any part of your video in a continuous loop to memorize an iconic scene (or annoy your friends).

Easy-to-Use Interface

With a modern, intuitive interface, using Elmedia Player is almost as easy as installing it and using it (did we mention it’s free?)

Mac Video and Audio Streaming via Chromecast, AirPlay, and More!

Elmedia Player effortlessly streams locally-saved files to your Apple TV, Chromecast, Smart TV, and many more DLNA and AirPlay devices. Elmedia Player can make video playlists like that just as easily - and stream FLAC music to your favorite big screen!

Apple TV and Other AirPlay Devices

Smart TV and other DLNA Devices

Chromecast and Chromecast Ultra Compatibility

How to Play Flac on Mac with Elmedia Player in Three Simple Steps:

1

Install Elmedia Player for Mac

Just head to our website to download Elmedia Player for free. After you download, open the file to install it on your Mac.

2

Open the App

Once the installer finishes, you can open the Elmedia Player app and you’ll have several different ways to play FLAC files on Mac:

Drop the .FLAC File straight into the open Elmedia Player window or the app’s icon in the dock.
Right click the .FLAC file you want to play and select “Open With.” Choose Elmedia Player from the options presented and double click on the video in the Elmedia Player Window.
From Elmedia Player, click File ---> Open and select the video you wish to play.

3

Enjoy the video!

Side note: If you use .FLAC exclusively for your media files or just have a whole lot of them, click here for a quick guide on how to select Elmedia Player to always open .FLAC files!

1

2

3

What is FLAC?

If you’re not familiar with .FLAC files, here’s a quick primer: FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec. As it says, the L stands for lossless, which means that any FLAC file played is an exact replica of an original, uncompressed, high-quality audio file, which is a rarity among other popular audio compression formats, like MP3 and WAV. No matter if it’s from a line-in recording, a CD, a music file created in software like Logic Pro, Pro Tools, or GarageBand, there is no reduction in quality from the way FLAC compresses the file. That makes it much smaller than the original file, but with the highest quality of audio available.

Typically you see FLAC files used by music nerds, audiophiles, sound engineers, music producers and many more. They’re good for all manner of things out there that rely on audio manipulation, because they’re the ideal audio version of an audio file.

Unfortunately, Apple Music doesn’t play FLAC files on Mac, which is why if you want to play a FLAC file on Mac you’re going to need to go third party, like Elmedia Player!

Pros:

Great sound quality, small file size
Portable to many systems
Open-sourced and requires no license to use
Hardware support (PhatBox, Kenwood MusicKeg, Rio Karma, etc.)
Streaming support
Super-fast decoding
Supports multichannel and high-resolution streaming
Supports ReplayGain
Supports cue-sheet (some limitations)
Getting popular support as a spectator to Shorten

Cons:

Compresses less efficiently than other popular formats (Monkey’s Audio, LPAC, OptimFROG)
Higher compression modes decode slower but have little gain over default settings

FAQ

Here are a few of the most frequently-asked questions we receive about FLAC files and Elmedia Player. If you have some questions that we’ve not addressed here, please drop them in the comments and we’ll get back to them as quickly as possible!

Can You Play FLAC on Mac?

Not with the default audio players for Mac. However, there are a bunch of different third-party audio players for Mac, the easiest to use of which is Elmedia Player. It’s popular, multi-faceted, and diverse which plays FLAC audio files with no additional codecs required to download!

Is Apple Lossless as Good as FLAC?

Popularly known as ALAC, Apple Lossless Audio Codec is close to FLAC, but can’t really cut the mustard like FLAC does. The compression isn’t as efficient, so the files will be bigger, but if it’s a tradeoff you want to make, it’s fully supported by Apple Music and iOS where FLAC is not. Don’t worry - Elmedia Player can play those too!

Can iTunes Play FLAC Files?

While Apple Music (previously known as iTunes) doesn’t support FLAC, it’s easy to convert them to Apple Lossless Audio Codec (also known as ALAC), a proprietary lossless audio format Apple Music supports. If that sounds like a pain to you, you can just use a third-party FLAC player for Mac, like Elmedia Player, VOX, or Colibri.

What other users are saying about Elmedia

Elmedia Player Pro is indeed a great upgrade for those who are ready to pay. For the amount you’re paying, you get a superb set of features like AirPlay support and ultimate compatibility.

Andy 4.5