Flac vs M4A

General Discussions
1

What are thoughts on which file format to use with adding music to plex. Is mp3 even a discussion?

2

You’re comparing apples and oranges…

  • FLAC is a lossless audio format (usually usually stored in a .flac file)
  • M4A is the apple flavor of a MP4 container… those files can contain various audio formats (usually mp4 audio / aac but it can also store Apple’s lossless audio format ALAC)

and yes… mp3 might still be in a lot of libraries but the format is bad by today’s standards.

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3

Does plex play flac without transcoding

4

Of all the lossless formats, Flac is definitely the best-supported by Plex.
Whether you can direct play Flac is dependent on the type of client (and sometimes also whether your server is local or remote).
I have successfully direct-played Flacs in web app (Chrome and Firefox on Windows)
Plex Media Player
Plex for Windows
Plexamp
Plex for Android

I know it is supported in Plex for iOS / tvOS as well.

Andoid mobile/TV supports also direct Flac playback, even as audio tracks in video files.

Unfortunately I cannot tell you about direct playback of flac on the smart TV platforms (LG, Vizio, Samsung, Playstation, XBox).
It might fall back to transcode to AAC, MP3 or Opus on there.

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5

Thanks so much! I have all Apple products so it’s good to know flac is supported by them.

6

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