Flac Vs MP3

Hi there,
Firstly excuse my ignorance around this topic. Two questions really.
As a general rule of thumb, I have always played my music with Windows Media Player, all the bitrate of my files are generally 320. However, considering I buy a lot of music from various online sites, I have noticed nowadays that as well as buying the 320 bitrate version there is an option of buying the same files in Flac.
Everyone tells me that Flac is a much superior listening quality compared to MP3 so I have been thinking of updating my future downloaded tunes to this format. I downloaded one to try it out but unsurprisingly it doesnt play in WMP. I also notived that the file was much larger, taking up more space than MP3.
Could anyone suggest a decent Flac player that I could download free off the net? And to confirm - is the quality much better?
The other question is this where to intall the player. I have sufficient space on my C: Drive but I have recently bought a WD Ext Hard Drive (1,000 gig) [mainly to store my music on]. Would it be possible to run a Flac player from this drive or would it have to be on my C: Drive and go throught the registry etc?
Many thanks in advance:
Skinno

 

Flac is better than mp3. Mp3 audio leaves out certain sound frequencies to get a smaller file size while flac has the same audio quality as a CD, although it uses less disc space than a CD. You need the flac codec to play flac files in WMP. http://flac.sourceforge.net/download.html WMP or any other media player will play music from any drive connected to your computer. No need to mess with the registry.

 

H there Just Playing,
Thank you VERY much for the swift reply and info - much appreciated. I downloaded the FLAC codecs and now playing a couple of tracks - WOW, the difference is great.
Thanks you so much for the info, I'm very grateful, although I'm not so sure my neighbours are now lol.
Skinno

 

:-D

 

This is my opinion also. I tried ripping a few FLAC songs from CD a year or two ago and can't quite bring myself to rip Mp3s any more. The size difference for the files is quite significant, usually about 7:1 for flac compared to mp3, but worth it for any song you really love and want to savor or play "good and loud"!