Which Audio Formats Does Tauon Support?

Tauon plays FLAC, Opus, Ogg Vorbis, MP3, AAC, ALAC, WavPack, APE, TTA, DSD, CUE sheets, MOD and SPC, and it advertises both lossless and gapless playback. That covers the common lossy formats, the main lossless formats, and album-image plus tracker/module files, so most owned music libraries will import without conversion. The one caveat: the format list comes from the project's own site, so very unusual or container-wrapped variants are worth a quick test before you commit a large library.

Format coverage at a glance

The site groups these under a "Lossless and gapless" feature line, which is the clearest signal that Tauon is aimed at people who keep their own files rather than stream.

What each group means in practice

Lossless and gapless playback

Tauon lists FLAC, Opus, WavPack, APE, DSD and CUE sheets together under lossless and gapless playback. In practice:

• Lossless means FLAC, ALAC, WavPack, APE and TTA files are decoded without converting them to a lossy step first.
• Gapless means tracks that are meant to run into each other — live albums, DJ mixes, classical movements — should play without an audible gap. This depends on the files carrying correct gap information, so a poorly ripped album can still gap even in a gapless player.

CUE sheets for album images

If you rip a CD as a single file plus a .cue sheet, Tauon lists CUE support, so the album should appear as separate tracks. This is the format to check first if you keep full-album images rather than track-per-file rips.

Tracker and module formats

MOD and SPC are listed alongside the mainstream formats. These are tracker modules and game-music rips rather than ordinary recordings, so if your library includes chiptunes or extracted game audio, Tauon is one of the players that names them explicitly.

How to check your own library

1. List your formats. On Linux or macOS, run something like find ~/Music -type f | sed 's/.*\.//' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn to see which extensions dominate. On Windows, sort a folder by type in Explorer.
2. Compare against the table above. Anything in the list should import; anything outside it (for example, niche containers or DRM-protected purchases) is unverified.
3. Test a sample first. Import a handful of files per format — one FLAC album, one CUE image, one MOD — and confirm they appear and play before importing everything.
4. Check gapless behavior on a live or mix album, since that is the feature most likely to depend on how the files were produced.

Common sticking points

• DRM-protected files are not addressed by the format list; purchased protected audio is a separate question from container support.
• CUE accuracy depends on the sheet matching the image file; a mismatched pair can produce wrong track boundaries.
• DSD playback may depend on your output device and settings, which the site does not detail — test on your own hardware.
• Platform differences are not documented per format, so if a format matters to you, verify it on the OS you actually use (Linux, Windows or macOS).

If your library is made of MP3, FLAC, Opus, Ogg, AAC/ALAC and the occasional CUE rip, Tauon's stated format list covers it. If you rely on an unusual container or protected files, test those first — the site gives no guarantee beyond the formats it names.