Lossless internet radio: which stations stream FLAC, and how to check what a station sends

Guide 7 · 7 min read

Short answer: most internet radio is MP3 or AAC, which drop part of the music on the way, whatever a station calls itself. Some stations stream FLAC, which drops nothing: of the 88 found here, three in four sent CD quality, 16 bits at 44.1 or 48 kHz, and five went above 48 kHz. Station directories are a poor guide: the largest lists five stations as FLAC, while 82 more of those found sit under "OGG", next to lossy streams. Ask the stream itself: ffprobe names its format in a second.

Checked on 2026-10-26: 333 streams read with ffprobe 7.1 on Debian 13, chosen in the Radio Browser directory (every station listed as FLAC or carrying FLAC, lossless or hi-res in its name or tags, the 150 most-voted stations listed as Ogg, the 150 most-voted listed at 256 kbit/s or more), and eight of them played in MPD 0.24.5 without a sound card. The formats and the directory's workings come from their specifications and source code.

Lossy, lossless, and what names say

• MP3, AAC, Opus and Vorbis are lossy. Their bitrate, 128, 192 or 320 kbit/s, says how much of the music is kept, not a resolution. A name does not change it: France Inter's "hifi" stream is AAC at 192 kbit/s, BBC Radio 3's "HD Sound" is AAC at 320 kbit/s, and "Classic Vinyl HD" is MP3.
• FLAC is lossless. Its bits and its rate are the stream's real resolution.
• Ogg is a wrapper, not a format: it carries FLAC, Vorbis or Opus, and a server sends all three as audio/ogg. Of the 125 most-voted stations listed as Ogg that answered, 56 sent FLAC, 35 Vorbis and 34 Opus.
• HLS, an address ending in .m3u8, sends the stream in short files. Its specification allows AAC, MP3 and AC-3 on their own, and Apple's adds FLAC and Apple Lossless in MP4 files: SomaFM's Groove Salad sends FLAC that way.

The 88 FLAC streams found:

Check what a station sends

ffprobe comes with ffmpeg: sudo apt install ffmpeg. Then, with the station's address:

ffprobe -v error -show_entries stream=codec_name,sample_rate,bits_per_raw_sample,bit_rate:format_tags=icy-br -of compact "http://stream.radioparadise.com/mellow-flac"

stream|codec_name=flac|sample_rate=44100|bit_rate=N/A|bits_per_raw_sample=16
format|tag:icy-br=1441

• codec_name is the format: flac is lossless; mp3, aac, opus and vorbis are not.
• bits_per_raw_sample and sample_rate are the resolution of a FLAC stream. A lossy stream has no bit depth, N/A: its bit_rate, in bits per second, stands in its place.
• icy-br is the bitrate the station announces about itself: an Icecast server passes on the figure the station's software gives it, and nothing checks it. Naim Jazz announces 128 for the same format as above, 16-bit FLAC.

ffprobe reads a second or two of the stream, follows redirections and reads HLS addresses as they are.

What station directories say

Radio Browser, a free directory to which anyone can add a station, listed nearly 70,000 stations on the day: two in three as MP3, five as FLAC. Its code explains why. A station's codec is what the server's Content-Type names, so every audio/ogg stream is listed as Ogg; its bitrate is the station's own icy-br. Read against the streams themselves:

• "OGG" hides most FLAC stations. 82 of the 88 FLAC streams found were listed as Ogg, one as MP4 (SomaFM's HLS), five as FLAC.
• Bitrates are what stations announce. The FLAC streams were listed at anything from 0 to 6,144 kbit/s.
• Names are not formats. Of the 97 stations that answered and that call themselves FLAC or lossless in their name or tags, or are listed as FLAC, 17 sent MP3, AAC or Vorbis: often a lossy version of a FLAC station, under the same name.
• "High bitrate" means lossy. Of the 141 most-voted stations listed at 256 kbit/s or more that answered, 113 sent MP3, 23 AAC and one Vorbis; two sent FLAC, and two could not be identified.

So search a directory for "flac" in names and tags, then check each candidate with ffprobe.

Stations found streaming FLAC

Read on 2026-10-26. Stations change their addresses: if one no longer answers, its own website gives the current one.

• Radio Club 80 Trance, Chile, 24 bits, 192 kHz: https://stream.radioclub80.cl:8052/trance80.flac
• SECTOR Jazz, Russia, 24 bits, 96 kHz: http://89.223.45.5:8000/jazz-flac
• Sveriges Radio P2, Sweden, 24 bits, 48 kHz, a stream its broadcaster calls experimental: https://live1.sr.se/p2-flac
• Radio Calico, United States, 24 bits, 48 kHz: http://roon.radio-calico.com:8000/roon
• Fréquence 3 Gold, France, 24 bits, 48 kHz: https://frequence3.net-radio.fr/frequence3gold.flac
• PureClassix, Netherlands, 24 bits, 44.1 kHz: http://mscp4.live-streams.nl:8140/flac.ogg
• Český rozhlas D-dur, Czechia, 16 bits, 48 kHz: http://amp.cesnet.cz:8000/cro-d-dur.flac
• Český rozhlas Jazz, Czechia, 16 bits, 48 kHz: http://amp.cesnet.cz:8000/cro-jazz.flac
• SomaFM Groove Salad, United States, 16 bits, 48 kHz: https://hls.somafm.com/hls/groovesalad/FLAC/program.m3u8
• Radio Paradise, Main Mix, United States, 16 bits, 44.1 kHz: https://stream.radioparadise.com/flac
• Naim Radio, United Kingdom, 16 bits, 44.1 kHz: http://mscp3.live-streams.nl:8360/flac.flac
• Naim Jazz, United Kingdom, 16 bits, 44.1 kHz: http://mscp3.live-streams.nl:8340/jazz-flac.flac
• Rondo Classic Klasu, Finland, 16 bits, 44.1 kHz: https://iradio.fi/klasu.flac

Some stations stream FLAC to one country only, for licensing reasons. Munich Vinyl Radio announces FLAC at 192 kHz for listeners in Germany: from France, its streams answered 401 Unauthorized.

Playing them with MPD

mpc add http://stream.radioparadise.com/mellow-flac
mpc play
mpc status '%audioformat%, %kbitrate% kbit/s'

• An HLS address goes in as it is. MPD 0.24 played SomaFM's and France Inter's .m3u8 from their https:// addresses, 45 seconds each, across several of their files. Written hls+https://, a form MPD's code accepts and some guides give, it failed on SomaFM and played France Inter with decoding errors, and ffmpeg's own log advises the plain address.

• What MPD shows is "the format emitted by the decoder plugin", in its documentation's words, not what the station sent:

  Station	Sends	%audioformat%
  Radio Club 80 Trance	FLAC, 24 bits, 192 kHz	192000:24:2
  Sveriges Radio P2	FLAC, 24 bits, 48 kHz	48000:24:2
  Radio Paradise, Mellow Mix	FLAC, 16 bits, 44.1 kHz	44100:16:2
  Classic Vinyl HD	MP3, 320 kbit/s announced	48000:24:2
  France Inter, hifi	AAC, 192 kbit/s	48000:16:2
  France Inter, HLS	AAC	48000:f:2

  For a lossy stream, the bits are the decoder's working resolution: an app that shows "24 bit, 48 kHz" for an MP3 says nothing of its quality.

• To reach the DAC untouched, a FLAC stream needs what a file needs: no resampling and no software volume. See How to check bit-perfect playback.

Through HQPlayer

HQPlayer's list of formats has FLAC and MP3, not AAC: "AAC is not supported as it requires additional patent licenses", its author wrote in April 2025. An AAC station reaches it only decoded beforehand, by a player such as Roon, which "always sends just raw decoded PCM or DSD to HQPlayer".

With Audiogravi^ty

Its Radio tab searches the Radio Browser directory, and a station missing from it can be added by its address. A station plays like the music on the box, to the same outputs. For HQPlayer, the box relays each station, and converts to FLAC what HQPlayer does not read: the conversion keeps the sound as it arrived, it does not bring back what a lossy stream left out.

The details are in the manual: Library & streaming → Internet radio.

Sources

• Measurements, 2026-10-26: 333 streams read with ffprobe 7.1.5 (Debian 13), from Radio Browser's answers to its station search; eight played in MPD 0.24.5 with its null output, the two HLS ones for 45 seconds; the directory's figures from its /json/codecs and /json/stats answers.
• Radio Browser: its API documentation and its server's source, radiobrowser-api-rust, which writes a station's codec and bitrate only from its stream check; the check, av-stream-info-rust 0.13.2, reads them from the Content-Type and icy-br headers. Read on 2026-10-26.
• Formats: RFC 9639 (FLAC in Ogg sent as audio/ogg), RFC 8216 (HLS), Apple's HLS Authoring Specification (FLAC and Apple Lossless, revision of June 2025); Icecast's configuration reference (an announced bitrate); FFmpeg's ffprobe documentation.
• MPD: its plugins and protocol documentation (the audio field).
• Stations, read on 2026-10-26: BBC Sounds on Radio 3's HD Sound; Sveriges Radio's technical support on P2's FLAC stream (January 2024); Munich Vinyl Radio.
• Jussi Laako, who writes HQPlayer, on the Roon forum: AAC (April 2025) and Roon (July 2021); HQPlayer's source formats.