Flacbox vs Refrain
Flacbox is an audiophile player with cloud and media-server connections. Refrain is a free local player. If you own a DAC, this comparison probably ends with Flacbox.
Flacbox is aimed at the audiophile end: hi-res playback, DSP, and connections to cloud storage and to Plex, Subsonic, Navidrome, Jellyfin and Emby servers. It is free to download with a paid tier at $4.99 a month, $19.99 a year, or $59.99 for lifetime access. Refrain plays local files, has no cloud connections and no DSP chain, and is free outright.
This is the comparison most likely to end with the other app, and that is fine. Flacbox and Refrain are aimed at different people who happen to use the same file formats.
Side by side
| Flacbox | Refrain | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free tier; $4.99/mo, $19.99/yr, $59.99 lifetime | Free, no in-app purchases |
| Hi-res / DSP | Yes, the point of the app | No claims made |
| Cloud storage | Yes | None |
| Media servers | Plex, Subsonic, Navidrome, Jellyfin, Emby | None |
| Formats | Very broad, incl. DSD, APE, OGG, OPUS, WMA | MP3, M4A, AAC, WAV, FLAC, AIFF |
| Fully offline | Downloaded tracks | Always |
| Equalizer | Yes, extensive | Yes, ten-band, 32 Hz–16 kHz |
| Synced lyrics | Basic | .lrc / .srt / embedded, synced, plus presentation mode |
| Batch edit artist/album/art | No | Yes |
| Wi-Fi transfer from a browser | No | Yes |
| Account required | For cloud features | No |
Flacbox details checked 7 August 2026 against everappz.com and its App Store listing. Note that Flacbox and Evermusic come from the same developer and share much of their plumbing.
Where Refrain wins
Price, plainly. $59.99 lifetime versus free.
Nothing to configure. Flacbox has depth, and depth costs setup. Refrain has an Add button and a library.
Repairing badly tagged music. Batch editing across any selection. Audiophile players assume your metadata is already correct, because their users' usually is.
Synced lyrics that actually scroll, plus a full-screen mode for a room.
No network path at all in normal use — a stronger privacy claim than "you can use it offline".
When Flacbox is the better pick
Most of the time, if you are the person searching for it.
You have DSD, APE, OGG, OPUS or WMA files. Refrain does not play any of them. That alone settles it.
You care about bit-perfect output and DSP. Flacbox is built for external DACs, upsampling and the rest of it. Refrain makes no such claims and it would be dishonest to imply otherwise.
Your library is bigger than your phone, or it lives on a Plex or Navidrome server.
You want one app across iPhone and Mac with a shared licence.
Moving your library across
Download the files you want on the phone to a computer, then Add → Choose a folder in Refrain, or drag them across with Wi-Fi transfer.
Convert anything Refrain does not play first — DSD, APE, OGG, OPUS, WMA — with XLD,
foobar2000 or ffmpeg. Refrain will not convert for you, and there is no in-app error that
explains why a .dsf did nothing.
Related
Last updated 7 August 2026