Radio Paradise FLAC

Posted by: J.N. on 19 August 2018

The excellent RP is now supposed to work in FLAC as a web-player. Via my iMac and Arcam irDAC - 'Ultra' (320k) is the best I can get to work. I get silence in 'Flac' - the DAC trips out.

It's an old Mac (2008) running Safari. The Arcam irDAC is set to 44k 24 bit and I can't work out how to change it to 16 bit. It offers settings for resolution up to 192k, but is apparently stuck in '24 bit' in MIDI settings. Might that be the problem?

I only use RP for background listening and it sounds very good in 320k. It would just be nice to know why I can't get it to work in FLAC.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

John.

Posted on: 19 August 2018 by ChrisSU

I’ve had no trouble getting RP FLAC to play from my MacBook. I wonder if this is related to the fact that Apple have only very recently started supporting FLAC, and perhaps your ‘08 Mac is too old to handle it, but that’s just a guess. Will the Mac play it from its built in speakers?

 If you have an iOS device, will the RP app play from that into your DAC?

Posted on: 19 August 2018 by J.N.

Thanks Chris. FLAC won't work via my 2013 MacBook either. There is mention on the RP web-site of VLC being able to do it and I have that installed on ye olde iMac, but I have no idea how to make RP play in FLAC with it.

I'll stick with 320k. It works reliably, and sounds pretty good.

John.

Posted on: 19 August 2018 by J.N.

Further.

Sorry Chris; I didn't answer in full.

Tried playing out of the Mac's internal speakers - still no go with FLAC, so it probably is a 'Mac too old' issue.

Tried plugging my iPhone directly into the DAC USB socket running the RP app and FLAC works! - but ............... through a Nait XS2 and Quad ESL57's, I can't hear any difference between 'Low' and FLAC'.

I can however; hear a clear and obvious difference between 'Low' and 'Ultra' via the Mac, so I'm not sure what's happening via the iPhone.

 

John.

Posted on: 19 August 2018 by ChrisSU

Apparently it can take a few minutes to start playing FLAC after you select it, so you may need to wait a while. 

Is your MacBook running an older version of OSX? Not sure what version is required for this, but maybe worth checking. My 2014 MacBook running OS 10.13.6 runs it OK.

Posted on: 20 August 2018 by J.N.

Thanks again Chris. Ye olde iMac is ticking along very nicely on El Capitan - 10.11.6 and I think the latest OS is problematic or a no-go on a Mac this old, from what I've read.

John.

Posted on: 20 August 2018 by GregW

Are you using the dedicated RP Mac app? If not you should consider it.  https://itunes.apple.com//app/...paradise/id663334697 Alternatively there is a simple Javascript based FLAC RP web player.  https://marco79cgn.github.io/radio-paradise/ It works best in Chrome, but fine in Safari if you give a little while to cache the music.

Try the official RP Mac app first, I find it excellent. It supports all of the streams including lossless FLAC and PSD feature.

 

Posted on: 20 August 2018 by GregW

Also if it's the only media app open you can use the media keys on you Apple keyboard to play/pause and advance the track etc.