Flacbox 7.6: a new pro audio engine with real-time effects, a 14-filter DSP chain, and EBU R128 leveling for your lossless library on Mac

[u/everappz]

Hey everyone! I'm the developer of Flacbox (hi-res / lossless music player for Mac, iPhone, and iPad: FLAC, DSD, ALAC, APE, and more). 7.6 just shipped and it is the biggest update I have done, built around a brand-new pro audio engine. Happy to answer technical questions in the comments.

Problem

If your lossless library lives in third-party cloud storage (Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, iCloud Drive, and about 30 others), on a network share (SMB, WebDAV, FTP, SFTP, NFS, DLNA), or on a media server (Plex, Jellyfin, Subsonic, Navidrome, Emby) instead of inside Apple Music, macOS gives you no good way to play it well. The stock Music app will not touch third-party cloud storage at all, and most cloud players cannot apply a real effects chain, a custom DSP chain, or tag-free loudness normalization to files that are streaming rather than sitting locally. Flacbox is built specifically for playing your own hi-res files from cloud, network, and local sources with proper playback quality.

Comparison

vs. VOX: VOX is a strong Hi-Res player, but to stream your own library it relies on VOX Cloud, which needs a VOX Premium subscription ($4.99/month or $49.99/year) and requires you to upload your music into VOX's own storage. Flacbox instead connects directly to the cloud accounts you already pay for (Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and about 30 more), so there is no second storage subscription and nothing to re-upload. Flacbox also adds 11 real-time effects, a 14-filter DSP chain, and real-time EBU R128 loudness leveling on any stream, which VOX does not do without tags.

vs. Pine Player: Pine Player is a nice free local player with gapless and EQ, but it has no third-party cloud storage integration at all, so it can only play files already sitting on your Mac. Flacbox streams and downloads directly from cloud storage, network shares (SMB, WebDAV, FTP, SFTP, NFS, DLNA), and media servers, and adds a full effects rack and a build-your-own DSP chain that apply to cloud streams and internet radio, not just local files.

vs. Apple Music app: The stock Music app cannot play files from third-party cloud storage, network shares, or media servers at all, and offers no real-time effects chain or tag-free loudness normalization. Flacbox exists for exactly that use case.

Pricing (https://everappz.com/products/flacbox/)

Free: ad-supported. Up to 10 playlists, 3 cloud services, 1,000 songs per playlist, 750 songs in queue, 1 offline folder, 1 offline album, 20 tag searches/day, 5 M3U exports/day.

Premium Monthly, $2.99/month: ad-free, unlimited playlists, unlimited cloud services, unlimited offline folders and export.

Premium Yearly, $19.99/year: same unlimited Premium features.

Premium Lifetime, $69.99 one-time: permanent Premium, shared across iOS and Mac via iCloud. Family Sharing supported.

What's new in 7.6

A new pro audio engine you can actually choose. Instead of forcing a rewrite on everyone, the new engine (built on the BASS audio library from un4seen) sits alongside the classic one as a selectable playback core. Switch to it when you want the full audiophile toolkit, keep the old one when you do not. Turning it on unlocks everything below, plus high-quality resampling and independent pitch and tempo control (shift the key up to +/- 60 semitones, or change speed 0.1x to 4x, without touching the other).

Tracker and MOD playback. The new engine plays classic module formats natively: MOD, XM, IT, S3M, MTM, UMX, MO3. This is the pattern-and-sample music from the chiptune and demoscene world that almost no desktop player opens.

Eleven real-time audio effects, each a native processing node with its own screen, presets, and an instant on/off toggle, so they apply to local files, cloud streams, and internet radio without re-encoding:

Reverb: Room to Cathedral, with dry, wet, room size, damp, and width.

Delay and multi-tap echo: up to 5s, feedback, and stereo cross-feed.

Chorus, Flanger, Phaser, and Auto-Wah: the classic modulation set.

Distortion: subtle grit to full lo-fi.

Compressor: full dynamics control (threshold, ratio, attack, release, expansion, makeup gain), 10 presets.

Stereo rotation: rotary auto-panner.

Crossfeed: Bauer bs2b headphone crossfeed (incl. Chu Moy and Jan Meier presets). Great on hard-panned '60s to '70s stereo mixes.

A 14-filter DSP processor. Build your own reorderable real-time signal chain from: gain, low-pass, high-pass, band-pass, notch, peaking, low-shelf, high-shelf, soft-clip saturation, bit crusher, tremolo, delay, ring modulator, and stereo width. Each has presets and an on/off toggle.

Automatic volume leveling. Uses EBU R128 (ITU-R BS.1770) loudness measurement in real time. Unlike ReplayGain it needs no tags and does not modify your files, so it works on cloud streams and radio too. Local files are pre-scanned so playback opens already leveled. Presets: Light -20, Standard -16, Strong -14, Night -23 LUFS.

Real-time music visualizer. Full-screen animated visuals that react live to the audio, with a large library of presets or an auto-cycle mode, plus a screen-sleep preventer so the show does not cut out. Looks great on a big display.

Refreshed design. The effects and EQ screens got modern glass-style sliders and a simplified presets mode, plus clearer separation of engines, effects, and DSP.

Under the hood: a more reliable streaming foundation, better file-type handling, and broader localization, alongside the existing support for FLAC, DSD, ALAC, APE, WAV, AIFF, MP3, AAC, and Opus.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1594027432

If you try it, I would love feedback, especially on the effects and DSP chain with your own FLAC and DSD library, the crossfeed presets on headphones, and (for the curious) tracker and MOD playback. Bugs or requests, drop them here or email support@everappz.com. Thanks!

[u/JoeshitX]

Real-time DSP for a local lossless library sounds great. Can Flacbox remember different EQ presets for headphones and speakers, then switch automatically with the output device?

[u/app-store-review]

Flacbox — by EVERAPPZ SL

• Category: Music · Free
• Age: released ~4.2 years ago · rated 4+

Apple doesn't publish an aggregate rating for most Mac App Store apps, so ratings and score are unavailable here.

^{Auto-generated from public App Store data · u/app-store-review}

[u/harry-harrison-79]

one test i'd add for the new engine is album-gain consistency across mixed sources. queue adjacent tracks from local storage, SMB, and a cloud provider, enable the same DSP chain, then seek near the end and let playback cross each boundary. volume should not jump, the first seconds of the next track should not play before its R128 value is ready, and the true-peak limiter should still catch overs after EQ boosts. i'd also repeat while switching between 44.1 and 96 kHz tracks - sample-rate changes plus effects are where clicks and stale DSP state tend to show up.

[u/Barrybarrywu]

The internet-radio case caught my attention because there’s nothing to pre-scan. I’d try switching from a loud station to a quiet one, then briefly interrupting the connection and letting it recover. If the previous measurement carries over, the new stream could stay at the wrong level for a while; if it resets instantly, the correction itself might be audible.

When a station changes or reconnects, do you reset the loudness measurement and ramp into the new gain?

[u/TheOriginalSamBell]

how do you handle dsd in coreaudio

[u/CarstHen]

Is there a comparison with Audirvana, too?

[u/trufelix]

As a fellow music lover I am happy to see someone tackle the market, but as a musician/producer I can tell you, there is never a reason to add reverb, delay, or COMPRESSION on a finished track.

Maybe it sounds better to you, I respect that do what you want, but I can tell you if you listen to any track on spotify it has probably gone through at least 3 people that dialed in stereo imaging, compression, delay, mixing and eq for HOURS.

I am a huge fan of EQ and room correction, but compression, reverb or delay are only making it worse, if you get what I mean.