[bigshot]

Look up the acronym for AAC too.

 

[viveksaikia22]

I have rockboxed my 5th gen iPod Video and I just love the fact that I can throw any file format to the player and it can play flawlessly.

 

[Bkindness]

To play FLAC in iPod, we need to convert FLAC to lossless audio format including Apple Lossless, AIFF or WAV. I know a step by step guide on how to play FLAC on iPod in lossless or lossy way with the help of the powerful FLAC Converter for Mac or Windows app.
 

 

[kryten123]

Quote:

To play FLAC in iPod, we need to convert FLAC to lossless audio format including Apple Lossless, AIFF or WAV. I know a step by step guide on how to play FLAC on iPod in lossless or lossy way with the help of the powerful FLAC Converter for Mac or Windows app.
 

Or you can just install a FLAC player on your ipod

 

[hogger129]

I believe almost all the iPods with the click-wheel can run Rockbox.  The latest Classic I think they say it's not stable, but I've heard of people doing it without issues.
 
iPod Touch and iPhone, you can buy the FLAC Player app.  Not sure on the price. 
 
I went the other route and got a Sansa Clip Zip and a 64gb microSD card and installed Rockbox on that.  It will play anything an iPod can, plus FLAC.  I've even run AC3 files on it (though I believe they just get downmixed to 2ch).

 

[hogger129]

Quote:

No one has mentioned the most obvious problem with lossless on the iPod.... It isn't designed to cache huge files properly. The hard drive is going to be running all the time, causing occasional skips in playback, wearing out your hard drive prematurely, and totally destroying your battery life.

Encode AAC 192 or 256. You will never hear a difference.

 
I have to agree with this. 
 
If you have a way to convert the FLAC files to AIFF, you can drag/drop them into iTunes and create Apple Lossless versions.  Just keep those in your iTunes library, and you should have an option to convert higher bitrate down to 128, 192 or 256 AAC. 
 
It's too bad they don't make iPods with SD card slots in them.  I think these actually last longer than HDD and you don't have to worry about knocking them around.

 

[White Lotus]

Quote:

I believe almost all the iPods with the click-wheel can run Rockbox.  The latest Classic I think they say it's not stable, but I've heard of people doing it without issues.

Correct! I run my 7G/Classic/160gb/(Whatever you want to call the current generation) with Rockbox, absolutely flawlessly. I don't get skips during FLAC playback, but then again, I sure as hell don't get 28 hours of lossless playback (lol).

This thread has more details if you are interested in this option, OP:

http://www.head-fi.org/t/532426/ipod-classic-rockbox-its-happening

I also run a custom Rockbox build by Aroldan. They have (from my experience) the most reliability, best battery life, and run the smoothest:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/b5xbw6cp4ikfxwn/MjELjmDNJ_

If you're the sort of person that's into themes/skinning, there are some nice skins available for rockbox, also. Here is the one I use: "Mstyle".
 
The two bars at either side are peak meters, for left and right outputs, respectively. They are incredibly snappy and responsive. 
 

 

[Mooses9]

i rip cd's with Windows Media Player In lossless format (.wav) at 1411.1kbps and they play fine on my ipod touch 4g 64gb

 

[hogger129]

Quote:

i rip cd's with Windows Media Player In lossless format (.wav) at 1411.1kbps and they play fine on my ipod touch 4g 64gb

 
EAC to FLAC for me, then I just edit the metadata/tags to what I want with MP3Tag.