StreamS HiFi Radio

An audiophile quality HLS FLAC lossless and AAC player. Versatile. Also a useful tool for pros. No sign-in or account needed, no monthly fees, no busy screens with promotional junk. I like its clean look. This player can retrieve cover art using the station’s artist and title info, even if the station isn’t sending cover art data. Looks cool on the dashboard. I can drive around town and thanks to HLS, can listen to lossless or AAC encoded streams without dropouts using this player on my iPhone with CarPlay. Tip: For best quality, connect with a cable to avoid additional Bluetooth lossy compression. I also like that you can find a stream’s bitrate and other tech info on the player’s “Geek Info” page. Now, here’s a more technical part of my review from my perspective as a broadcast engineer. The StreamS HiFi Radio player is from the same company that makes the excellent standards-based streaming encoders that my stations use, so they definitely get the player right. It supports xHE-AAC, which delivers surprising quality at low bitrates. When using cellular, the player conserves data usage by selecting the lowest available bitrate, and when on WiFi picks the highest rate for best quality. A feature, not a bug. (Most HLS streams have different bitrate streams available for the same program.) Of course, if you select a lossless stream, it plays lossless, even if using cellular. And if you want to always play a particular high bitrate stream, you can custom-enter the URL of the desired bitrate HLS variant, and save it to Favorites, as I have done for our dozens of variants. Sure, you will have to know this info, but some broadcasters publish it on their websites, or you could ask them. In addition to providing high quality entertainment that is beyond broadcast quality, it’s a reference-quality player. It’s an accurate and useful tool for me, since it can show technical details of the streams. I purchased it personally (for me, it’s worth many times its price), and I was not compensated for this review.

If you know anything about streaming you know this is the only app needed for audio streaming.

I’ve own this app for over 10 years. It’s one of the best. It’s my goto music app for live radio. Great audio quality and very reliable. It works really well with CarPlay and Siri, the best so far.

I like the updated version of this app. Lower loading times easier to access the map and it seems to support all the native codecs in the Apple OS. The main screen has a faster load time and larger icons. Good value for the money. Five stars.

This version just got better. I love listening to my favorite stream: Soma.fm GrooveSalad in lossless audio codec. This is amazing CD quality. These are so many stations but I mostly stick to my usual.

Someone recently turned me onto this app and I am immediately found the radio station audio coming out of my iPhone to be superb. It was almost like it had turned into a supercharged stereo. The station list of radio stations from around the globe is impressive. The nice thing, they all work! My two favorites are Big 8 Radio and LG73.

Audio does not load on T-Mobile cellular connections. Loads fine on WiFi. I have to start the audio on home WiFi when leaving the house, and switch to cellular. It will not load on its own over cellular.

I could understand preferring to use other codecs other than MP3, but to not decode an MP3, when it is frequently used by streaming sources, makes this program expensive garbage. It should be stated VERY clearly that the program is likely useless to many users because of the lack of MP3 support.

This latest update allows me to listen to my favorite station in HQ audio, even those that require a login, like MartiniInTheMorning.com Thanks

Pleasantly surprised how fast the support was and how friendly the rep was. The app so far does what I need it to do, though the real test will be tomorrow and I’ll update after my test with CarPlay. If all goes well, this app will be the best radio app I have gotten.