How to play FLAC file with Windows Media Player 12

Anonymous
2009-12-30T20:15:31+00:00

Is there any way to play Flac files with Windows Media Player 12?  A hefty percentage of my music library is FLAC. 

Thanks!

Lloyd

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Music, photos, and video

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Anonymous
2010-01-05T15:56:49+00:00

Hello L Goldfine,

Thank you for your inquiry.

The Flac extension is not a supported file type of Windows Media Player. You may however user your favorite search engine to search for a solution that may convert the file to a Windows Media Player supported file type.

For more information on Windows Media Player supported file types you may also view the following link: 

Information about the Multimedia file types that Windows Media Player supports

I hope this information is helpful.

Thank you,

Mary

Microsoft Answers Support Engineer

Visit our Microsoft Answers Feedback Forum and let us know what you think.

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-05-21T15:33:32+00:00

    This article does a fair job of describing why Windows Media and Apple iTunes do not provide native support for FLAC.  

    "While no one cares much about FLAC use in small apps and hardware devices, were a big company such as Apple – or Microsoft, who doesn’t support FLAC either – to start supporting that format, it’s very likely that someone would dredge up a patent and seek copious damages."

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-05-21T15:06:48+00:00

    For those searching for WMP FLAC support try the XIPH.ORG site.

    http://www.xiph.org/dshow/

    Happy Listening!

    I am running Windows 8 and was having issues listening to .FLAC audio files. The CODEC for Windows Media Player 12 at http://xiph.org/dshow/downloads/ really does work!

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-05-19T17:32:51+00:00

    "I love open source - you can compile it yourself and inspect the source first to see if there are any spy/mal ware."

    This is an absolutely ridiculous statement. How many people really KNOW what to look for in the code? That's exactly what happened with OpenSSL - used by millions, checked by two people.

    MS opens itself to malware allowing for third-party components, instead of writing their own. For people that "don't need FLAC", they can offer the option to load or unload those MS components like they do with everything else in the OS (games for example).

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-05-19T17:17:57+00:00

    I know it is a good 4 years from the date of the post but it was too dumb to not reply coz this is the most stupid reply I could have imagined ...

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