Advice on converting from Wav to FLAC on masse

I've got most of my CD collection burnt to MP3 320 for use on my phone and ipod shuffle. I'm now planning on selling most of my CDs and streaming the files for home use *thinking about a squeezebox but not bought anything yet), and using a fiio for playing higher-res files (CD quality and above) on the go.

As I'm selling the CDs I want to preserve a lossless copy rather than the mp3s I have. This means I'm re-ripping all my CDs again losslessly. I started doing this in iTunes, ripping to Wav (probably not the best move?)

I now realise that I really want these files in FLAC to save a bit of space when backing up, on the on Fiio.

What's the best way of converting lots of Wav files to FLAC? ideally where I can point the software at the files and let it get on with it, rather than having to deal with it album by album, again ideally with some tagging. Is there something out there that does this?

As iTunes doesn't deal with FLAC and my hardware is now non-apple, any recommendations for a music management app to use with my Fiio?

 

J River Media Center will easily batch convert any number of wav files to flac with just a couple of mouse clicks. Unless I'm mistaken, their 30-day "free" trial version does not have any functional constraints, so the trial-period demo would probably do the trick.

 

The tagging is going to be the biggest issue, I don't know of any software that can automatically tag existing wav files. If you included the artist, track number, album name and track name in the file names somehow you can use Tag & Rename to automate the process somewhat.

 

Honestly, you'd be best off just starting the ripping process yet again, with a properly set up version of EAC. It'll autimatically rip and tag everything, in FLAC, and it'll verify the rip is accurate as well. It's very quick and best to do things right the first time I think, so you never have to do them again, you know? Then it doesn't matter what happens to the CDs.

 

If you're going to be getting rid of the CDs you're going to want to make sure you've got an accurate and verified rip of the CD. You do that by using a ripping program that uses AccurateRip to verify that the rip was good.

I'd suggest starting over and re-ripping all of the CDs using a ripper that verifies with AccurateRip. AccurateRip is an online database of checksums for CD rips. It compares the rip you do against the online database to verify if the rip was good or not. If it finds a match then your rip is good with no errors.

I'd suggest using either CUETools/CUERipper, EAC, or dBpoweramp. All three support AccurateRip.
CUETools/CUERipper is free and easy to use
EAC is free but has some usability quirks
dBpoweramp costs $39-$58 but has the best metadata lookup. It's worth it if you rip classical music CDs. Also includes a batch file converter that will let you convert to/from WAV, FLAC, ALAC and other formats.

Rip everything with an AccurateRip ripper. Save the log file that shows the rip was verified. Keep that log file with the rest of the files for the CD. That way you'll know the rip was good and be able to go back later and see in the log file that the rip was good.

This gets a little bit more complicated if you have CDs that have pre-emphasis or HDCD. Those disc will require a little bit extra work. You'll end up kicking yourself if you sell off a pre-emphasis or HDCD disc without having properly done the extra processing for those discs.

 

Definitely dBPowerAmp! Best $40 I've spent on audio software.

The "CD Ripper" does a great job in secure mode to weed out errors and search the Internet for tagging info and cover image.

The "Batch Converter" tool will go down directories and convert anything to FLAC en mass.

Of course, there's the legality issue of ripping, keeping copies of the data and selling off the CDs themselves based on your description...

 

Thanks for your comments everyone, I'm using dBPowerAmp to convert the wav files I've already ripped, then ripping the rest straight to FLAC.

What I'd love recommendations for now is a music manager alternative to iTunes for managing the FLAC files and loading up my Fiio with - something simple and straight forward, that allows me to create playlists too would be nice. Happy to pay a bit for it, doesn't have to be free. Using it on a Windows 8 PC.

Thanks - this forum is great!

 

Look at JRiver Media Center, Foobar2000, MediaMonkey, and MusicBee. They all will be able to do what you want. But all will do that somewhat differently, some of them very differently. Which one works best for you depends on how you think a music player/manager ought to work and how that music player/manager ought to play and present your music library. The only way to find out which one is for you is to try them and find out which one syncs best with they way you think a music manager out to be.

JRiver Media Center is commercial and will cost money. MediaMonkey is commercial but also has a free version. MusicBee and Foobar2000 are both free.

I prefer JRiver Media Center. It works the way I think a music manger ought to work. It's is database driven. Keeps the library in a database that lets you search and manage your library as you would in a database. It makes sense to me and is the way I expect software of this sort to work and has the features for doing what I expect in both playback and management. But it also has its own way of thinking which isn't going to agree with everyone.

 

I too use EAC. Quick, easy and one step.

 

I'll support those who advocate ripping verified accurate in Flac in dbPoweramp. It just works.
When it comes to loading up a Fiio (own a x3) drag and drop works well although I preload micro sd cards by genre for that quick off and go ease.

 

I would rip and convert with dBpoweramp. It costs $38 for the full version, but will do everything you need. If you need something free, use Exact Audio Copy and convert with foobar2000. Foobar2000 is a great music player also. For loading music onto microSD cards, I always used SanDisk Media Manager, had it scan my library and then just sync'd what I wanted to the card.

 

Not really up on PC software, but for the Mac XLD is free and absolutely marvelous. I used to kind of scoff at using a "fancy ripper" vs. what was built into iTunes, no longer.

 

XLD on the Mac. Done.

 

MediaMonkey

 

dbPoweramp is working on a Mac version. It's in beta now. Works great.

 

XLD literally has a batch processing section. I can make the settings I want, drop my 1.5TB directory (structure) of lossless CD rips....and have it spit out whatever from it--retaining the folder structure.

In the OP's case, there's actually an option to delete the original file if he's brave, so it will literally find the WAV, convert to flac and delete the WAV. The only thing I don't think it will do is update CUE sheets, if you are ripping with CUE files.

 

Another thing it won't do is run on a PC.
Nice to see that the Mac folks are finally getting some of the tools and capabilities that the PC users had a decade ago.

 

Dear Brother Ham Sandwich,

We had those capabilities for years. I've been using a Mac for the last 8 years and have found apps that do the job. First was Max, then XLD and now I use the same dbPoweramp that runs on my Think Pad. We also get the upgrade happy J. River. Most apps, after you beta test for them, give you a deal on the release version of the app, not J. River, full price and then they lied about what would be in the app, then said "we're putting in in the next version and that will cost you more." Screw them. I Tunes works just fine for me.

 

It does actually work very well. The full version of the Mac OSX version of dBPowerAmp just got finalized in the last couple of weeks and is now available:

https://secure.dbpoweramp.com/store_purchase.aspx?p=9

 

Not to be that guy, but technically if you sell the discs you no longer have the right to format shift the music (e.g. keep MP3 copies).

 

Might as well sell all the CD's and just download proper FLAC rips via torrent. What's the difference.

 

Looks like it just went live yesterday! Cool beans.

 

Wouldn't downloading FLAC via torrent be seen as 'worse'? I could DL things I've never owned. At Least I've paid for these CDs once!
Let's just say I'm going to keep all my CDs and this is for convenience of streaming and portability.

 

Thanks all, here's what I've done:

Used dBpoweramp for batch converting the Wav I had already burnet. Then used MP3Tag to at the metadata.
Then used dbPoweramp to rip my remaining CDs straight to tagged FLAC.

For music management I tried out Foobar2000 and Media monkey - not that keen, seemed clunky, slow and not attractive to look at.

Now trying out J River Media Jukebox (the free one) - much nicer to use, but still slow - takes a while for all the cover art to load, hangs when moving files to portable device - can anyone confirm that the J River Media Centre is much better (quicker?) before I buy it?

Gonna give Music Bee ago now...

 

The Jukebox version of JRiver is old. No longer similar to the current full version. Lots has changed.
The full version of JRiver Media Center does have a 30 day trial. You can play with it before making a decision whether to buy it.
There's also the option of trying PonoMusic World. It's based on JRiver Media Center. It's free. Download available on the PonoMusic main web page. I don't know how well it would handle non-Pono portables. It's basically the audio portion of JRiver Media Center rebranded, also has some other features stripped out. But enough is there to give you an idea how JRiver Media Center works.

The first time you run JRiver Media Center it is going to be slow as it reads in all your music files and loads them into its database. It's also going to be slow while it generates thumbnails for every album. Once all that is done it is much faster. It is capable of managing libraries of hundreds of thousands of tracks or even a million tracks without slowing down too much.