Flac File Players Available in India

It’s pretty clear to us that our readers are aficionados of good quality audio, and so are we. As discussed in my column, a compressed audio file is just not what we prefer, as the sound is planar, lacks detail in highs, and is just plain lacklustre. But of course the problem is already solved by few genius open source programmers, who have made lossless compression formats. Meaning we can take a wav file and reduce its size for storage, to a certain extent, without actually losing quality. One such format is FLAC files.

The extension is called .flac, and they are audio files that measure a little more than half the size of the original audio. So now the question arises as to which players support this format, as it is, a different file format. It’s not so easily supported in regular players, but there are a couple of players that do, and they are touted as high end. Out of these handful, there are 4 popular ones available in India, 2 are PMPs and 2 are Hard disk media centers, obviously reviewed exclusively by Tech2. Thus you can listen to Flacs at home and also on the move. One important point here: the mentioned brands have other models too, and mostly the entire range supports flac. We are mentioning the ones we have looked at ourselves firsthand.

Cowon S9 (16 GB)
Rs. 15,750
S9 is a super PMP( personal media player), which was originally mistaken to be a phone by some of our readers. It’s not a phone, but rather a slick and sexy media player. This is one heavy duty device, rightfully getting a good review by Tech2. To start off it has a strong battery life at 7 hours 45 min for video, and 43 hours for audio, thus flac files can go on and on. The 3.3-inch AMOLED (16 million colors 480 x 270) capacitive touchscreen display is what you use to access your files. It has a copy paste function for video and audio, thus flacs can be simply put in. the EQ and sound customizing options are very impressive and offers good amount of tweakability to the user. Audio output is loud, but the only thing is you will have to use your own good quality earphones. Bundled earphones are never good, OK?

Archos 7 (320 GB)
Rs. 39,000
This is not a player, but rather sports a more wide tag: a multimedia internet tablet. It’s a capacitive touch screen based, huge monster that plays many files formats including our beloved flac. The unit can be used to connect online via built in Wi-Fi b/g card and also download tracks and rent videos from online. Off course drag and drop is supported, and then it’s simply a matter of touchy feeling your way into the music folder and playing your flacs. The interface is good because of large and well laid out icons, and so is the touch screen’s  responsiveness. The bad points are that it's expensive, and on top of that and some add ons are not free.

Western Digital WD TV
Rs. 7,600
This is one of the best products we’ve checked out in a long time, it is a little blackbox that connects directly to your television and home theater, and plays files off a HDD. It reads Fat32 and NTFS both, and file formats supported are vast in both video and audio, including our spotlighted format : Flac. It’s as easy as drag and drop flac files to the Hard Disk, and then the file is accessible from the OSD menu and can be played. The player also supports HD video files like .MKV so it’s a fun filled box.

TVIX HD M-6500A
Rs. 27,000
After looking at the Western Digital mentioned above there might not be much need to look elsewhere, but still it’s our job to provide choices, and there is one nice player in the market called the TVIX HD -6500A. The only caveat here is that it’s expensive. The form factor is larger than the WD, and comes with a more comprehensive menu and remote. For eg. you can download images and customize the GUI. It supports flac very well, and also plays a hosts of media formats ranging from DivX to MKV HD files.