It looks like somebody would need to add a decoder here.

http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=platform/external/opencore.git;a=tree;f=codecs_v2/audio

>flac's are HUGE files, bigger than wav files!

This is completely untrue. FLAC files are 40-50% smaller on average than the
equivalent uncompressed data.

>what's the point of a lossless music file on a cellphone

In-ear headphones or other audiophile equipment. Believe it or not, there is gear out
there high quality enough that you can hear the difference.

>the cpu power and memory power alone might put this as not possible

Not true, FLAC has around the same level of computational load as MP3 (if handled well).

>On top of that the G1 as with other cellphones can only take a 16gig sd card anyways

See above. ~500 MB is pretty hefty for an album but certainly not outside of the
range of feasibility for SDHC cards.

(No comment was entered for this change.)

flacs are pretty much the de facto format for lossless music storage. despite lack of
mainstream adoption from ipod (which pushes its own proprietary lossless format),
flac has still retained the crown of lossless audio and a major win for open formats.

if android wants to be considered a serious audio player it will need to earn the
respect of the niches that treat audio players lacking flac playback seriously.
because after .mp3 format and aac, flac the runner up for digital audio in the web
download shops and the runner up to mp3 on the torrent sites. i can fit 2-3 albums on
a 1gb card, which is enough for me on any outing.

reasons why android needs flac support:
-open standard
-most popular lossless format for music
-it needs the audiophile customers that iPhone is leaving in the cold

This is important for all those people (like me) who use FLAC for their music
collection on their desktop, etc, and don't want to (or don't have space to)
transcode all that music for use on their mobile device.

I think the place developers would want to start is the fileformats directory of
OpenCore.  I can't find any relevant documentation, so I'm not sure how that
directory and the codec directory that sukael posted relate to each other.
http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=platform/external/opencore.git;a=tree;f=fileformats

The developer will also have to define new constants PVMF_FLAC and PVMF_MIME_FLAC and
update the list of recognized formats:
http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=platform/external/opencore.git;a=blob;f=pvmi/pvmf/include/pvmf_format_type.h
http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=platform/external/opencore.git;a=blob;f=nodes/pvomxaudiodecnode/src/pvmf_omx_audiodec_port.cpp
http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=platform/external/opencore.git;a=blob;f=pvmi/pvmf/src/pvmf_format_type.cpp
http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=platform/external/opencore.git;a=blob;f=nodes/pvomxaudiodecnode/src/pvmf_omx_audiodec_node.cpp
http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=platform/external/opencore.git;a=blob;f=engines/player/src/pv_player_engine.cpp

FLAC requires a great deal _less_ computational power on all the ARM cores we do FLAC
and MP3 playback on in the Rockbox project (http://www.rockbox.org/) and I would
expect the typical Android-platforms to have the same characteristics in that aspect.

Here's the FLAC source from Rockbox that Daniel mentioned:
http://svn.rockbox.org/viewvc.cgi/trunk/apps/codecs/libffmpegFLAC/
Note that Rockbox is licensed under LGPL and Android under Apache 2.0.  I'm not sure
whether that would be an issue.
Also, Conrad Parker has written a blog post about OpenMAX that I believe is worth a
read: http://blog.kfish.org/2009/02/is-openmax-important-for-free-software.html

I would also love to see FLAC being supported in Android, despite FLAC files being
larger than MP3 storage is getting so much cheaper and bigger these days that fitting
a sizable FLAC collection on to a memory card is no longer an issue. I would
certainly consider moving to an Android handset if FLAC were to be supported.

Could we please get some comment from an Android developer/Google employee?

Really this is one of the few areas where I don't think the Google engineers have to
get too involved. If the Packet Video OpenCore can library can be improved to support
FLAC that'd do it.

A good starting place would be to peek at how OGG is integrated into the platform.  I
remember hearing somewhere that OGG might not even go through OpenCore at all.

Jeffrey is correct.  Ogg does not go through OpenCore.  Rather the Vorbis reference
implementation, Tremor, is used
(http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=platform/external/tremor.git;a=summary)
If anyone is considering working on media codecs, you may be interested in Google
Summer of Code:
http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/Summer_of_Code_2009#OpenMAX_IL_components_for_Ogg_codecs

First, solid state memory keeps geting cheaper and capacity keeps geting higher, so
FLAC starts to be a more viable options just as time goes by.

Then Flac is completely open source codec and it's a very fast at decoding time (good
for battery saving when playing).

If the cupcake android update will indeed have the bluetooth stereo profile, this
means we can put the audio out of the phone exacly as it was on the original audio CD
and keeping the best quality possible (keeping the digital stereo 16bit 44100hz over
bluetooth).

So now I belive no one can say we don't need FLAC because internal DAC output is not
good enough (using digital output), or it needs too much storage (time will take care
of this issue).

If it could be implemented inside the DSP it would certanly be best optimized for
batery/CPU usage.

BTW- let me go ahead and state if your requirements for a music player aren't sky
high, 16gb of FLACs is more then enough to get me through the day (on the player I've
been using). I want to replace it with an android once support is there.

Let's not be self-centered or shortsighted, people! Just because you might not choose
to put FLAC files on your Android device doesn't mean that other people wouldn't want
to. Also, Android is going to be on a lot of different kinds of devices, and maybe
some of the future devices will be designed with more storage for media playback in mind.

Ok, now that we have A2DP support in Adnroid 1.5 (aka cupcake) we can use this high
fidelity bluetooth DAC to interface with HIFI stereos:
http://whathifi.com/News/Transfer-music-from-your-mobile-to-hi-fi-with-the-Chordette-Gem/
Now guess what's missing from the big picture? FLAC decoding in android... (could it
be done by hardware using the dedicated DSP's inside G1?;)

This would be a great addition to the android platform - flac seems to be the best
bet for a lossless audio standard. 

Another vote for this enhancement request. Will save me maintaining a flac and mp3
library.

Much of my music library is in FLAC - having to encode it into MP3 before I can use
it is a pain, not to mention the quality loss.  Space is not an issue, either.

Same for me. I would be very happy to be able to use my FLAC library on android. 

Another vote from me, I also have my music collection in flac on the desktop.

Another vote from me, I have my music collection in FLAC to use with my Linn Sneaky
DS and it would be a pain to convert it just for Android.

Unfortunately, using code from Rockbox or from ffmpeg is just not going to work, due
to licensing. There is no way that LGPL code (Rockbox and ffmpeg) can be included in
a project with an Apache/BSD/MIT style license (Android). We'd have to start with
libFLAC, and optimize from there.

Another vote here.
I already have a bunch of flac in my computer's music library.

iphone os has apple lossless, so android should have flac lossless support :)
meybe port libavcodec to android, that way its easy to add more codec support
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libavcodec#Implemented_audio_codecs

I have a 16G SDHC for my G1. My desktop has 64G of flac files. Mounting mp3fs every
time I want to add or remove tracks from my G1 is not an elegant solution.

samsunng i7500 has built in 8GB internal memory and upgradable to 40GB (8GB+MicroSDHC 
32GB) and thats around 93 CDs in FLAC, and the internal 8GB is around 16 CDs in FLAC

i hope to see FLAC supported, many of my friends also want it to

@rmrector - there's no reason to avoid LGPL in Android - Android uses LGPL already
(notably WebKit).

It has been acknowledged that Webcore and bluez are probably the only rare
exceptions. It is not of interest to pull in more (L)GPL components.

Bluez is not of interest. Bluetooth burns battery life. Who put that rubbish in there.

"It is not of interest" to you.

bump, another vote from me!

Another vote for FLAC support.
Please!

Another place you can vote for the idea: http://productideas.appspot.com/#9/e=cf&t=flac

Also I would be very happy if FLAC support was added. My main reason for going after
a phone with android was that they had vorbis and (I thought) Flac support. 

Another vote for FLAC here. I can't buy an Android phone until this is added :/

Is there any roadmap for this implementation. It shouldn't be that complicated.

Has there been any feedback from a Google developer yet? 

This issue is now 6 months old and obviously very popular. I really think if Google
are seriously going to compete with mainstream products like iPhone they have to step
up their level of customer service.

It doesn't seem that the Devs are listening, but I'll add my vote anyhow.

I too won't be buying an android phone until support for FLAC is added. The idea of
transcoding my entire music collection is not an appealing one.

And another vote from me.

And a vote from me

The recent release of the native development tools
(http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/1.5_r1/index.html) might make this a bit
easier.  The FLAC API is available in C and C++
(http://flac.sourceforge.net/api/index.html).  It would be interesting to see if the
FLAC API compiles with the native development tools.

@Donald, the NDK doesn't provide an efficient way of piping decoded buffers over to
the media subsystem.

The best option is to write FLAC support parallel to
frameworks/base/media/libmediaplayerservice/VorbisPlayer.cpp, and plug the ".flac"
extension into MediaPlayerService.cpp.

VorbisPlayer is just some lightweight glue to get over to the external/tremor
library.  We would do the same thing with FLAC, add the core library into external/
and write the glue into libmediaplayerservice, adding the library reference to
Android.mk.

j

Another vote for flac support - upwards and onwards, people. Lossless support, please. 

I would be really enjoy having FLAC support on my Android phone. I don't want to have
to convert my music to have songs and ringtones on my phone. 

THANKS!

Hi, I'm a FLACtard, and would love to have FLAC support on my Android phone. I don't
like lossy music! I like the good stuff! c'mon it's 2009!!

Ever hear of allFLAC.com? it's a great site.

No way to get rid of the spam in these bugs is there?

I was thinking in take a S60 (end of the year), and put oggplayer to play Vorbis and
FLAC files. But Android is nice, ok, but a native support for FLAC would be nice, and
no need more to encode audio in lossy formats.

It's large, but with a 1GB SD Card i can put 2 albums to play anywhere.
And space is going to grow day by day, anyone here thought in put a ("complete") O.S.
on a mobile 'phone' years ago? ;)

And FLAC is free software, then, i see that all ways goes to support.
(I just can't talk about technical questions ;) )

o/

I am currently running a 5th gen iPod video with Rockbox. As a Linux user, once this
iPod dies, I cannot upgrade to another Apple device due to interoperability
difficulties. Since my current cell-phone is several years old, upgrading to a decent
smartphone, running Android, is likely the direction I will go.

Having said that, the majority of my music collection is in FLAC, and if Android does
not support FLAC decoding, then I will also not be able to upgrade to an Android device.

I can't imagine it would be /that/ difficult to add FLAC support, so what is the hold
up? I would contribute myself if I even knew where to start...

I think you should check how the ogg part has been implemented and do the
wrapping/bindings on the FLAC libraries :)
But you must get the whole android sources I think (I don't know how to exctract only
parts of it) (about 2,7 GB after git sync)

http://source.android.com/download

I actually wrote this patch a couple days ago. I'm still testing its stability and
there are a few bugs to work on with the Thumb interwork.

I don't think it will be accepted to Android mainline any time in the next several
months (or ever?) because it adds another shared library.

@kenny:

The only way to make it happen is to show that FLAC playback is possible, and to
provide the cleanest, fastest implementation of it that we can. Convince those in
charge of the mainline that this is a highly desirable feature -- sometimes its worth
adding to the system if the benefits are abundant enough.

A (simple basic) question:
If i get a Android cellphone now, i'll be able to "upgrade" to a new version that
will support FLAC?

o/

I think answering yes is quite secure ... :)
(Already changed firmwares 3 times on my HTC Magic/MyTouch 3G : official,
frenchcommunity, Orange UK HTC Hero image adapted to HTC Magic (with the HTC Sense
interface/programs)

I finished the patches and uploaded the changes into Gerrit:

https://review.source.android.com/10908
https://review.source.android.com/10909
https://review.source.android.com/10910

The CyanogenMod ROM uses this to provide FLAC support from version 3.9.3 onward:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=539744

kruton, that is awesome!!  Thanks for taking the initiative and putting together the
patchsets.  I'll try finding someone to code review this and get it merged ASAP.  :)

Just ran some numbers here at work using a Monsoon, which is an extremely accurate
power meter for embedded devices.

I did a pretty large suite of testing, measuring various speaker/headphone
combinations, volume levels, and file formats.  The final result is that all formats
are equally inefficient, lol.  Here's a quick example from one of the songs:

VBR -V0 MP3:      112.65mA
OGG -q6:          112.4979mA
192kBps CBR MP3:  111.82mA
FLAC:             110.46mA

The differences are /marginal/ at best, which means that FLAC reading large files
from the internal SD card has little impact on battery used.  (The majority of power
here is used by the ARM11, since all decoding takes place in software.)

Here's the full set of measurements I took:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=tMfXDet38HraVU0E3lzVM8A&single=true&gid=0&output=html

Congratulations kruton for the patches and thanks Jeffrey for the "benchmark".
Day by day we see that's a good and interesting (and necessary)thing to Android
system and your users.
Some Android developer look this please.

And for those worried about space, the 2TB memory cards are coming up.

Cheers. o/

For those needing Flac support on their phone, I fully recommend rooting your phone and flashing Cyanogen's mod. As Kruton mentioned 3.9.3 first had flac 
support, 3.9.7 is out now and it is great. Not only do you get flac, but also apps to SD, wifi teather and more. I couldnt be happier with it!

Any luck finding someone to integrate/accept/review these changes to donut/2.0? (I 
for example wait for possible SE android-phone which will use 2.0. And I'd like to 
see flac-support there.)

We're internally swamped right now.  I tried finding people with bandwidth, but this
change won't be reviewed and merged until after Eclair.  In particular, native
libraries like this need a thorough security review, even if the library is well-known.

Here is a precision: we are past feature freeze on Donut and Eclair, we unfortunately cannot add this extra 
feature.

(No comment was entered for this change.)

@Romain

could this at least be looked at? cyanogen seems to have integrated this with little 
problem. shouldnt be much work to it i dont think.

thanks.

Off topic, but is Android team open to submission from ROM hackers such as Cyanogen?

This is important for me as well.

plus one vote for me!
i always rip my cds into flac, mp3 and ogg is lossy, i think flac is pretty much the
only free lossles audio compression out there.

It is absolutelly enough to click star at the top of the page for your vote to be
counted ! Otherwise all of the voters are spammed with your messages .... just like
this time :-P 

Let's see whether this will help

Please add FLAC support :)

I've just purchased an HTC Hero because it was an android phone. I was amazed to find
out that Android didn't support flac. I'm now forced to us wav files.
Please add flac support.

please hook up the flac. not having it just tempts people to go down the cyanogen 
path

Please stop posting "I want this too" messages or other messages which don't
contribute to the bug! That is what the star is for!


I am following the conversation and I keep getting bothered by loads of pointless
emails. I am sorry to people I have bothered with this one...

FLAC PLEASE FOR ANDROID!!!

FLAC support would be an important addition to Android.  I'd also be more compelled
to get an Android phone if this happens.  Pretty soon everyone is going to realize
that there is no point to lossy formats, and FLAC is the de facto lossless format...

I would also like flac support. I am considering buying a Droid and flac support
would go a long way towards convincing me of my purchase. I have to keep flac and mp3
files now because of my old mp3 player. Having to only keep flac files will actually
decrease the amount of storage I use because I will be able to delete all my mp3 files.

@ everyone wanting flac : http://the-b.org/FLAC_on_Android

@ csmcdem : That will not work for those of us considering a Droid since that mod is
built on Android 1.6 and Droid uses Android 2.0

just talked to the developer @ http://the-b.org/FLAC_on_Android, said he can't update 
to support android 2.0 because the source hasn't been released yet.

https://review.source.android.com/#change,10910

Is there a step by step tutorial how to get these patches installed on a stock hero. so 
even a person that cooks for a living still understands it? I would really appreciate 
it. 

Cheers!

(tsss no FLAC support... WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY THINKING!?) It's like buying a car 
with no...uhm  but getting a trycicle.

@BradleyJLang

Does that mean Google is officially going to add it?

@Batrick.Donnelly

No these links are so called 3th party patches created by members of the android 
opensource family :P. 

I dont know if official ondroid developers will look here and use there stuff in 
official releases. I think why not its the way of opensource right? the whole world 
can have a part in it right? Correct me if i'm wrong, sometimes it looks they are jealous of the fact 3th party's can do the job and they don't and that they are to 
proud to admit and to embed it in an official releases.(why else conflicts with 
Cyanogen etc?) 

But by all means i hope offcourse i'm wrong and we can have flac support in "Andy2.0"

(And basic bluetooth functionality: send, contacts, presentation remote, etc. like 
any other phone with BT)  

hello i too would very much love to see the addition of flac support to the android os i know its possible because 
the archos 5 which runs on android just did it

http://www.archos.com/products/imt/archos_5/specs.html?country=ru&lang=en

now if they can do it i don't see why google cant, especially if they are aiming to adopt and champion the open 
source community and cause

I vote for FLAC also since 1/2 of my music uses this lossless format. Why should use
a worse format if I can simply listen to this format? FLAC is an important encoding.

There is already a FLAC player for android called AndLess, but it's very very basic
and beta. 
I use FLAC to store all my cd's on my desktop computer and use andless to play them
on my Hero. I'd like to see it embraced properly by the Android community as well.

It looks like AndLess requires root access, which I am not ready or willing to do.

If someone makes an app for Adroid 2.o that works as a .flac player, I will buy it.

AndLess won't work for the Motorola Droid, even with root access because it requires 
direct access to /dev/msm_pcm_out - that doesn't exist on the Droid. 

Add FLAC support!

in this times its a NEED to losless support for every mobile phone/smartphone... 

+1 for flac / WAVPACK support for android devices.

Sorry guys but can you PLEASE stop writing comments like "i need this too" and just 
star the issue? I also want FLAC support very much and 345 other people do as well 
but fortunately not everyone has the need to comment on it. That's what stars are 
for, comments serve for different purpose - discussion about details of the issue, 
possible workarounds, how the issue should be implemented, etc.

Very disappointed there's no flac support. I had to encode my entire library to 320 kbps mp3.

I got very little to add except to say that I would very much welcome the capacity to 
play FLAC files on my Droid.  I got "Ultimate Ears" headphones and I am sure I could 
tell the difference on the Jazz and Classical music that I mostly listen to.

I too would like .flac support on android.  It's not even just about getting flac to
work either.  There are so many high quality codecs that our devices like the verizon
droid could handle with ease if Google would just open up the path for devs to take
advantage of what the phone can really do.  

Everyone's hands are basically tied behind there backs when it comes to media
development on the android os at the moment it seems.  I really hope Google starts to
take off on this issue because this could really make this platform shine.

Yes, add flac support.

Some one knows if creative has plans for this?. In the info about the Zii Trinity,
Android OS section it appers FLAC support, if thats true will be awesome, the Trinity
just kick ass, and with flac support will be the dreamed gadget (even more).

Please add .FLAC support. saves me from converting media to mp3 for my phone. It's
opensource and should be easy to add.

Please add Free Lossless Audio Codec support!  This is one of my core requirements for 
a P.D.A.

Please add FLAC support!

FLAC just makes sense! Android being an 'open' system deserves a quality audio
compression system... FLAC is the answer.

Pls..Pls add flac support

I'm surprised GOOGLE did not think of FLAC support. FLAC is open and GOOGLE shares an
'open' philosophy to some extent. That's one of the reason I haven't bought an iPhone
or iPod. 

PLEASE please add FLAC support to android. 

Really need flac support for my Samsung moment. Its free and OSS so I'm confused as
to why flac support wasn't included to start with.

Flac for my HTC Hero would be awesome, plz bring it to Android! :)

Yes. I too would love FLAC support :)

I also vote for FLAC!

+ 1 for adding FLAC. Once you listen to FLAC there is no going back.

Let me join in on this one! Please, if anyone is capable!! Let me recommend 
dBpoweramp for your converting needs until some great talent manages to program 
this :)

peace out

FLAC, APE and WV for me please!

Really it is necessary for us, for this reason I and have bought htc hero with android

Please give us FLAC support ! 

Please add .flac support to Android. Preferably as an installable update to the 
existing versions. This is a real must have!

I have to admit that i bought an Android phone, without checking if it 
supported .flac. I was convinced that it did. I was an easy add on to a Nokia E71, 
so why not on Android ?

Flac please!!!

I'm waiting for this too. Multitouch[nexus one] is a great step for android but the
next step is flac.

The Nexus One has F.L.A.C. support... just not officially.  Seek it on Google.

So does the Moto Droid, I just played a FLAC file.  No app is really setup for it yet
though (that I have found).

My entire music library is ripped in .flac.  If there is .flac support and the sound
quality of the onboard DAC etc. is very good, I WILL BUY AN ANDROID PHONE.

I too would love Flac support.  

I too would love to see FLAC added to the droid support list. Please add soon!

FLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAC!!!

Definitely needs FLAC support

FLAC, WavePack, APE, CUE support!

Same here! FLAC support for Nexus One~

future trend towards digital music & lossless music, all cellphone, mp3 portable 
player etc. should have FLAC & APE support. Simultaneously, all above should support 
hard drive instead of flash memory.

Hi guys , found this : http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=575923
works great on hero .

i will not buy a android phone before there is FLAC support.

hi,
As moz4r.AG said :...  http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=575923 ... work 
on Nexus One, too! :) tks mooz4r.AG

moz4r.AG + hienluu2000,

that sounds awesome!

question though - did either of you install that player using a stock ROM?

I'm downloading the zip file, deleting the zip extension to make it an apk, attempting to 
install with appsinstaller.  I always get a "there is a problem parsing the package" error.

found the answer over at the xda thread.

for some reason, the apk, when unzipped using my mbp didn't work out.

unzipping it on my laptop at work did the trick.

I can now enjoy flac on my n1 and it's all kinds of sweet.

Wow this is one of the most requested features for android (top 11 right now).
I would also like flac support, all music that I buy right now is in flac or
(wav/cd)->flac.

Good to see people requesting this. Add me to the list

I too would love to get real FLAC support on my Droid...

flac support is great for classical fans,we don't need to store 2 different format--mp3 
and loseless flac. 

FLAC on Android is an absolute must have for me, like others before me already said.. 
the idea of re-encoding or transcoding my collection is just nuts! 

Android being an Open Source platform it should at the least support Open Source audio 
formats. I still have to carry my Cowon AND Android while I would like for my phone to 
be my #1 and only device.

As fresh user of a android-powered phone i would LOVE to see native flac support in
the future. As for music i would rather use my old tape player than mp3 - seriously,
quality is just better.

Lossless bass rules. i put a computer in my car because nobody would build a deck
that plays FLAC. i carry a sansa in my pocket for tunes because 1) drag and drop 2)
native FLAC support. FLAC means never having to look for a better copy, lets you keep
one music library the way the artist intend it to be heard forever. megabytes are
obsolete...i really cant believe they haven't added support for this yet.

Native .FLAC support for Adroid is a MUST! I will switch over as soon as NATIVE FLAC 
support happens.

is there any date for the implementation of the FLAC support yet?

How recently have people tried Andless on the Motorola Droid?  I tried it this
morning and found that it plays flac fine even without rooting the phone or any
special setup whatsoever--just download it from the market.  Plus its UI is based on
reading from directories on your phone rather than going through the song
title/artist/album tags, which I prefer.  

I totally support this! Almost my ENTIRE collection was lossless ripped in FLAC, and
it's a pain to convert to lower quality ogg files. It's nice to have them all in the
same format. Theora support would be great too! :D

Almost my entire collection is in FLAC so native support would be much appreciated.

"Andless" from the marketplace works ok on my nexus one but would much rather see
built in support.

Indeed.  I just noted that my Droid doesn't handle FLAC files natively.  This seems
fairly cheap to enhance.

Another vote for flac support here.

Another vote for integrated FLAC support please.  andLess will play them but i dont 
want to have to run up a separate app for FLACs and i dont think the interface is 
very good yet.  Integrated into the standard player is a must.  Thanks.  (HTC 
Desire).

I want to see native support for this! :)

Can we get an Android Developer's confirmation as to whether or not FLAC support will
be included in FroYo?

I would like to see this coming on Android system. Please make it happening natively 
as I rip nearly everything using this format.

Thanks

As stated in the xda-developer thread, there's another alternative player doing
several formats:
http://www.androidtapp.com/meridian-player/

If you want to stay with andless - get the latest version from
https://code.google.com/p/andless/downloads/list

andless (v1.2.1 build 26.03.2010) works well on my (non-rooted) nexus one, if not
touched. It stutters when switching to/doing other tasks

It is my understanding that the decoding of mp3's and other formats are done by
hardware on the phones not software. This could be why they did not include flac
decoding as none of the phones have hardware decoding of flac. 

From the Nexus One tech specs
http://www.google.com/phone/static/en_US-nexusone_tech_specs.html it has codecs for 

AAC, AMR, MP3, MIDI, DLS, XMF, RTX, OTA, iMelody,  Ogg Vorbis, WAVE.

Since FLAC is not listed in the tech specs, I imagine it would have to be done all in
software.

Makes complete sense adding support for FLAC and the others mentioned above.
 
Android will become much bigger than just mobile handsets and Android is trying to
push itself as the open-source leader for devices.

@bmfahy: All codecs are decoded using a mix of software and hardware. There is no
reason that FLAC can't be added. 

+1 for FLAC support. This feature is a must have for me, so I've had to abandon the
default music player in favor of a third party player, andLess, which does support
FLAC. I would much prefer using the original music application however and hope
Google supports it in the next update.

I'm running a HTC MyTouch 3.5jack with Android 1.6.

I support the inclusion of FLAC in android as much as one possibly can.  The moment a
mobile phone with FLAC support is released I will rush to the store at twice the
speed limit to buy it.

The Nokia N900 has FLAC-support if you install the proper codec. However you need to make .m3u playlists for 
each album, cause the browsing of the meta data in FLAC files doesn't work.

please please please add FLAC support! i intend using my next phone as an audio player 
as well, and adding FLAC support would make android devices very attractive, indeed.

Cyanogen include Flac support, but no album 
picture

FLAC support would be awesome! I'm really looking forward to this feature. Thanks :-).

Thanks for the useless live wallpapers but how about something useful like FLAC
support. I mean if a modded rom can support FLAC whay can't you turn this on? 
Oh and the list of movies codecs suck too

Flac and Musicbrainz tag support would be great!

eveybody should ask about flac support in the san francisco conference taking place 
right now! google we want flac support!

Yes, flac, please.  Or at least some lossless format.  We've got 3.5mm jacks and 16GB
of storage pretty commonly on these devices- it's time to give people the option of
high fidelity.

Please note my support for FLAC. Thx.

FLAC is a no brainer for the Android OS

One vote more for FLAC support, it's ridiculous that an open source platform don't
support a great open source audio codec like flac. They don't have to pay any
royalty, patent or something like that, afaik, so what's the problem? Almost 1000
comments here btw.

Non of the flac players work on my Desire phone.  I should have researched this
instead of completely expecting native support.  

In all other aspects my android phone has streamlined my life interfacing with
machines, but in turn this makes having to convert my flacs to mp3 even more of a chore.

True there is less room for flac files on my 16gb card, and true its hard to discern
any difference in fidelity from the D-A audio chip in the htc, but since having
networked my phone to my PC using Estrongs, its such a breeze to manage music on the go.

FLAC, give it.

http://www.androidzoom.com/android_applications/multimedia/andless_fucr.html
Just try this APP which support .FLAC music file. Enjoy it!

@anson.chang: Apps are a workaround, but they don't meet the need for a native, built-in FLAC codec.

Just so you guys understand why this isn't in stock android:
Someone needs to write a non-GPLv2 FLAC library, Apache, BSD or LGPL should be ok.  So, instead of complaining lets get together and make a AOSP-friendly FLAC library.  

libFlac and libFlac++ *are* BSD license. http://flac.sourceforge.net/license.html

While it is not the native OS support for FLAC we all hope to see in Froyo, FLAC support is available from the variously named models coming to all four major carriers under the Samsung Galaxy S umbrella.  The Samsung music player loaded on these phones supports (from the website):

Music Player with SoundAlive
3.5mm Ear Jack
MP3/AAC/AAC+/eAAC+/OGG/WMA/AMR-NB/AMR-WB/WAV/
MID/AC3/IMY/FLAC/XMF 

Flac would be great for ppl like me who have all their music in flac, and dont want to transcode..

Flac is no more exotic. I mean it is standart for good quality music nowadays. If you want to create good opensource os, one good thing is to add a possibility of support of as many free standarts as possibly.
Flac support will be appreciated.

FLAC is already supported in custom mods with FOSS modifications. I suggest a mergeback of the CyanogenMod FLAC decoder.

Another vote for FLAC support.  I plan on buying a android phone in the future.

@26
Clearly you don't understand how the LGPL works.

FLAC would allow me to listen to music.

FLAC is using by http://www.deutschegrammophon.com/cat/ 
3. About the music in this shop
downloads in two formats:
   1. MP3 files at a high quality bit rate of 320 kbps (kilobits per second)
   2. FLAC files that give you the full audio quality of the CD (16 bit/ 44,1khz) .
http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison.html 

My entire music library's in FLAC format. Like a poster wayyyy up top, I don't want to have too many duplicate files (albeit in mp3 format) floating about my pc: it's messy; it's a hog on HDD space - FLAC please!

Yes please. A mobile device that natively supports FLAC playback would allow me to playback a good portion of my music collection.

meridian supports flac on my desire, but there are many hickups.
True Flac support would be nice!

Completely agree - FLAC must come to Android!

FLAC is a must!  Sorry but I already dumped all my mp3 files.
As a novice android programmer I'm ready to help to write a player regardless of the time it takes. Please count me in for such project

I would also love to see FLAC on the android, surely it couldn't be that hard nowadays?

Hi-fi flac for me, please. 24 bit, 96 khz. Also, while we are making this a real platform, record to flac 24 bit.

hi all, there is a flac player available at xda now, support is still limited but it's a start.
 just google andless.....

Yeee

This must not be very high priority otherwise it would have been solved by now. I'm guessing that most people just bit the bullet and transcoded their FLACs to MP3. Personally, I've played around with the aftermarket FLAC decoder on Froyo (Extra Media Scanner) and have had abysmal results; music lagging and skipping, and background processes appearing in task manager.

Perhaps 24/96 downconversion on the Droid is unrealistic. Or perhaps the decoder I'm using has been implemented using a bunch of floating point computations instead of short integers. Either way, I would love to be able to use [stock] Android to playback my FLACs reliably, since it's the majority format shareholder in my personal music collection.

I agree

I don't want to have to transcode my lossless media. PLEASE fix this!

Support for ogg but not flac? FLAC please. Making users transcode files may be considered evil.

I don't want to have to transcode my lossless media. PLEASE fix this!

If APE goes well, it will be great for me!

I would love to be able to play FLAC natively in my Android phone. You have my vote!

Music player is useless to me without FLAC support. Also m4b support would be great. Google pls fix. Ok? Thanks.

It's Great to have FLAC on the HTC .. AudioPhile Quality !!

Flac makes up <60% of my music. This would be a huge improvement! I'm tired of converting all of my music D:

Still no FLAC? It's a shame.

Transcoding everything I have on my computer is such a pain. That's the reason I tend to use Sansa Clip+ for music instead of my Android device; it's a tiny and inexpensive gadget with little CPU powerr that supports FLAC just fine.

FLAC and Apple Lossless would be hammer!

Am I missing something here???   I bought the Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant (i9000) with 16Gb internal SD and 16Gb External SD, which of course is android 2.1 for now.  I can load and play .FLAC perfectly fine without a hiccup....  However, I had to figure out how to get album art to show, which was simple.  Then I had to figure out how to hide all the album art from the main photo gallery but still show on the music player, which I did.  But now I need to figure out why the only tag it does not transfer to the player is the <album artist> or <artist> tag???  All other tags show fine but the artist tag is always "Unknown".  I'm still searching but if anyone knows anything please let me know.

Android plays FLAC natively?? I'm in!!!

There is no reason for Android not to support FLAC nactively. Another popular smartphone (and not the one from the company who puts the letter "i" in everything) already supports FLAC natively on fairly underpowered hardware.

FLAC is supported on the media player on Samsung Galaxy S Captivate as well. 

I want FLAC for my DROID x

Yet another vote for FLAC on Android. Make it so.

Yet another vote for FLAC on Android.

FLAC support would be aces in my book!@

The first device that has FLAC native playback I am buying it.  I purchased a cowan instead of an ipod because of FLAC support.

FLAC support on the droid incredible is ESSENTIAL. andLess is a fair work around as it does work, only not very well.

In time it is possible that the app may gain some steam and features, but having FLAC support natively would be just perfect.

+1!

Me too.  I use a 5G ipod with rockbox and FLAC of course.  Just got my Xperia at the beginning of the summer and want an all in one player with FLAC.  If they wanna compete they need FLAC.

@pelehos I believe that Samsung went out of their way to add their own FLAC support in their modified version of Android ... That's the only conclusion that I can draw since no other device (running their stock retail release) running Android 2.1 or 2.2 can play FLAC natively yet. There are players that have added non-native FLAC support, but I want native too, and there's no reason why google can't add this support.

Couldn't they just include Kenny Root's FLAC support from CyanogenMod? Is it really that difficult?

Any nre funcionality is welcome

I really want native FLAC in my 'droid. :/

Yet another vote for FLAC on Android. I will not buy one before it's at least announced that it will be native!

Native support of Flac is a must have today!

flac native sounds like the right "strategic" approach. Could be that lossy formats have had their (very useful) day. Since my N1 has 32GB, and there are bigger SD cards on the horizon lossy might be anachronistic. 

Certainly there are a lot of different formats out there (APE to mention but one). Maybe the guys at videolan might port their lovely VLC player to android. That would keep everyone happy

It's really troublesome to re-&encode lossless audio files in to MP3/AAC format which it sounds horrible for classical music. Please support FLAC on Android!

Please add FLAC & cue support

Flac support is needed, why support anything else?

Android must support FLAC as soon as possible !

For those bringing up the Galaxy S phones - they have FLAC support courtesy of Samsung. Stock Android (and pretty much every other phone) does not support it.

There should be no reason that FLAC is not supported by default by Android when there are no licensing fees, yet 3rd party apps support it, and Android supports mp3s.

This should be high on the priority list, there really is no reason this shouldn't be supported from the onset.

What about this patch?
https://review.source.android.com/#change,10908
I though it was already merged..

Yet another vote for FLAC on Android.

Obviously Android can't handle processing FLAC with mobile processors in the 800-1000Mhz range. Maybe when the dual core tablets hit we'll finally get FLAC support...
...
??? 

jcfinc, that's incorrect. Using this patch (from Kenny Root), the CyanogenMod build of Android for the HTC Dream/T-Mobile USA G1 which has a 528 MHz capacity plays FLAC from consumer SD cards without a hitch: http://the-b.org/FLAC_on_Android

vote for FLAC on Android!

Please add FLAC support. You do not realize how much FLAC is being used. This will be the nail in the iTunes/iOS coffin.

I think the case has been made well enough. I have nothing more to add than my voice. Not sure why this issue hasn't been taken up. Native FLAC support is a must-have for myself as well as many others I know in the audio industry. 

Please add this needed feature for Honeycomb (even if Honeycomb may not come to smartphones)

Another request for out of the box FLAC support. Apple has lossless supported in all its iOS devices in the form of ALAC.
A lossless codec is essential to some people. Not everyone listen to music with 5$ headphones. It is incomprehensible it still not has been added in by now, except for Samsung who integrated it.

I almost bought an android phone last week. The EVO. Why have I not? Because I'm trying to track down a music player for android that plays FLAC. That is the determining factor for what I will buy; whatever phone has an app that place a high quality lossless format. Apple has it right now. I don't like iTunes, so I haven't bit yet.

My main thing will be plugging my phone into my cdless deck, in my car. First thing I do if I get the EVO or something, will be to buy a 32gig class 10 microSD card and fill 20gigs of it with music. I want the best sounding audio that I can get on a mobile phone. It would give android hella bragging rights if it had that feature, native. I don't know why this isn't supported already. It seems retarded that it's not.

mp3s sound like garbage. Get with it people. Jeez.

I love the DLNA feature on the in-built Android music player: it automatically sees all the music I have stored on my ReayNas. However it is all stored as FLAC so I can't play it. 
Please add FLAC support to the Android in-built music player.

FLAC already works on Android phones via the appstore. Personally, my favourite app for the job is andLess...but if the phone natively supported FLAC, third party music apps would be redundant imo. None of them support DLNA and Flac as far as i can find, and DLNA is an awesome feature for those lucky enough to have a NAS device that supports it. FLAC support alongside would make it invaluable. My Android phone is awesome. Please make it awesomest.

I think it's silly and plain wrong that a modern plattform as Android is doesnt have support for FLAC and other big filetypes :(

+1 Flac is needed in Android going forward

Hi,
Hopefully everybody is aware off the app called 'endless' ? It doesnt have all the options like the standard music player that comes with Android, but it can handle .flac. 

Yes, bu we need native support. Otherwise we will be forced to install Cyanogen.

Adding my voice to the case for native flac.

Please, I hope I can using my android cellphone to play my flac music instead of the old iaudio u3.

And without native flac support, I can't use flac as the ringtone.

BTW. 90% of my music collection are flac.

Thanks for your hard work!

Regards.

Like many of you in here I too have a large FLAC music collection. FLAC superior sound is one thing, but the convenience of NOT having to copy a FLAC file to my micro SD card, or convert a FLAC file to MP3 is really a must for me. When I fire up DLNA and point my Motorola Atrix phone running Android to my media server, I want my FLAC files to play from that location. 

Android is a remarkable platform. I hope someone gets the "FLAC" message and makes it better.

Regards,
David

Please add FLAC support to the Android in-built music player.

I think FLAC support is fundamental.

I must say that I was surprised with this thread, since my Samsung Galaxy i9000, with Android 2.2, already supports it,  which means that there are other devices that does not support it.

I am just shocked there is no FLAC support in android already. I'm using 2.3 on the Nexus S and had just assumed this was not a problem anymore - I was wrong.

Why hasn't this been dealt with already. I mean, really? Is it that high-quality audio isn't seen as a priority? I don't want to have to transcode my files every time I update my phone's library. It seems backwards, similar to the conversion from word-perfect to microsoft word which we had to do in the 90s.

There is no flac support in honeycomb, but there is in cyanogenmod 7. Do we have to wait an cyanogen honeycomb port?

To work around the issue try Extended Media Scanner (by the same author as Meridian Media Player). Here although it seemed to hang, after running EMS all the players on my SE Xperia X10 recognise the tags on the .flac files. (It might have helped that I added ID3 tags along FLAC tags using EasyTag.) 

In any case this proved a solution: now all the tags in .flac are properly recognized and I can get high-quality (!) audio on my phone.

I don't understand Google on this? Whyy disapoint so many people for such a minimal simple missing feature? Please add FLAC support.

I recently moved out of the iStuff jail, bought a brand new Nexus S (so did my wife BTW), and despite the real overall pleasure I have now to be in a much more open environment, I am *really* shocked to see that I can't directly use my large FLAC file collection on my brand new device.
Seriously, this feature should have been tackled years ago and when I read this thread, I wonder what the hell happens... This is a DEFINITIVE must have!!
Thank you andLess for the workaround but it is only workaround.

See comment 241, the code is written, can it not be used? 

Still wanting/waiting. 

I was shocked when I discovered lossless support missing.

FLAC support is the only important feature this device is lacking.  Storage is cheap and I'm moving my collection to lossless so many of the old MP3's have already been deleted.

Hard to believe Android does not support flac.  This is a major downer.  I have thousands of files in this format, which I have no desire to convert just so android can play them.  I am trying to play them over wifi using cifs and having no luck.

Please please add flac support, it would avoid so many headaches with transcoding.

this is a needed feature that i hope to be implemented before i get my new phone.

this is a needed feature that i hope to be implemented before i get my new tablet.

I have been waiting over 2 years for native Android .FLAC support.  Years of suffering through iTunes...  hoping Android would be able to beat it cold with native lossless support! I have been patient... I'd code it myself if I could.  Please?

FLAC is in Android 3.1 and up.

Yippeeeeeee yay :) FLAC is now natively supported in Android 3.1 (Honeycomb update)
http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/media-formats.html
http://www.ubergizmo.com/2011/05/android-3-1-now-plays-flac-audio-natively/

As noted above, FLAC is now in Android 3.1 and up.

<3

I've only got Android 2.1 on my Sprint Hero and FLAC works fine in 
that.  It didn't previously.

Thank you :D Will this be coming to mobile phones, also? or is the CPU usage too high for the battery?

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you! Can't wait to run 3.1!

Fantastic!

I'm going to assume that if you guys want to get FLAC support on your phones, you'll need to wait until the next version of Android (Ice Cream Sandwich) comes out sometime in the 4th quarter of this year.
If anyone doesn't want to wait so long. I recommend checking out CyanogenMod, which comes with FLAC support.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CyanogenMod

Thank you for this awesome new feature! :)

Uhm.... You already can play flac with many free programms out there. Like : "Andless", "Meridian", I run 2.1 HTC Hero and i Jammed a 32GB mSD in my phone. I'm in losless heaven right now. I dunno about the quality of the DAC. In combination with Grado SR-60i or iGrado you'll be satisfied. Trust me! Grado Rules! 

Running flac on Android 2.2 froyo out of the box on Galaxy tab

Why is there no flac support on ICS,while it works in Honeycomb?

@comment 287
thats because samsung added the support into their rom
@comment 288
hmm, what device?

Why does the latest Android 4.1.1 (Jelly Bean) not support ALAC files yet? 

Anyone who follows audio in the slightest, should have noticed that the ALAC codec has been open sourced by Apple for well over a year now under an Apache License 2.0. 
And as it's basically a codec in an MP4 container format, and Android already plays MP4 files like h264 video, this should surely be a very simple thing to accomplish for relatively little to no work. 

Dumb at the moment, really dumb!  Many audiophiles use ALAC (not just FLAC — as iTunes often gets used on their desktop!), yet the devs here seem to have ignored this major fact entirely by just doing half the job in only offering the later. 
Not impressed, and certainly cancels any reason for myself (and a great deal of other longterm Apple users, wanting to try something else instead of iPhones!) to have the option to switch to Android is it?! 

Go and learn!: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lossless