Flac to lossless and/or AAC converter

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by Keith V, Aug 20, 2014.

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  1. Keith V

    Keith V Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Secaucus, NJ
    What's the best way to convert FLAC to lossless and AAC?
     
  2. vinylkid58

    vinylkid58 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Victoria, B.C.
    FLAC "is" lossless.

    jeff
     
  3. Keith V

    Keith V Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Secaucus, NJ
    yeah but it doesn't work in iTunes
     
  4. Gabe Walters

    Gabe Walters Forum Resident

    OS X, Windows, Linux, what's your operating system?
     
  5. JohnT

    JohnT Senior Member

    Location:
    PA & FL gulf coast
    To retain lossless I use foobar to convert flac to AIFF - but the results are not economical space wise.

    Foobar also supports converting flac to MP4 if space matters.
     
    Keith V likes this.
  6. Keith V

    Keith V Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Secaucus, NJ
    Windows 8.1
     
  7. ruben lopez

    ruben lopez Nunc Est Bibendum

    Location:
    Barcelona Spain
    XLD
     
    chrischerm likes this.
  8. Charles Buxton

    Charles Buxton Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Antonio, Texas
    On the Macintosh side of the house, I like Max http://sbooth.org/Max/. It is very easy to use and even will drop the converted files into iTunes for you, if you so desire. It is a wonderful program. You can choose whatever output format you desire: AIFF (essentially CD), ALAC (Apple Lossless), AAC, etc. Once you choose your output format, it is very easy to use. It supports all the tagging you could possibly want, plus album art.

    There are other such programs, but this is the one I've stuck with.

    Hope this helps.
     
  9. Keith V

    Keith V Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Secaucus, NJ
    I think I downloaded Max in my PC just now. I'm going to test it in a little while. (it didn't take too long to download, is that normal?)
     
  10. Gabe Walters

    Gabe Walters Forum Resident

    I use Max for Mac. Assuming the Windows version is similar, it's a very small program and should only take a few seconds to download.
     
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  11. Keith V

    Keith V Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Secaucus, NJ
    I didn't even check if it was for PC. It doesn't seem to work anyway. Plan b?
     
  12. Gabe Walters

    Gabe Walters Forum Resident

    Oh yeah, looks like it's Mac only. There are PC-specific recommendations in this thread. I haven't used Windows personally in about nine years, so I don't know what's current.
     
  13. Apesbrain

    Apesbrain Forum Resident

    Location:
    East Coast, USA
    foobar2000 will do it. Encoder settings for ALAC and AAC are below:

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
     
  14. adamdube

    adamdube Forum Resident

    Location:
    Elyria, OH USA
    DB Poweramp. Cheap, effective and quick.
     
  15. vinylkid58

    vinylkid58 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Victoria, B.C.
    Or just use Foobar2000 and leave itunes for the Mac users.;)

    jeff
     
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  16. Wngnt90

    Wngnt90 Forum Resident

    Easy CD-DA Extractor.......the Swiss Army Knife for audio. You will have to pay for it....very much worth it though.
     
  17. scompton

    scompton Forum Resident

    Location:
    Arlington, VA
    I use dbPowerAmp because I bought it for ripping. If I didn't have that, I'd use foobar.

    In dbPowerAmp you can do both conversions at once.
     
  18. Keith V

    Keith V Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Secaucus, NJ
    How easy would it be to do that? I've only had a computer for about a year yet I'm so used to iTunes. Would it be a big learning curve?
     
  19. vinylkid58

    vinylkid58 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Victoria, B.C.
    Keith V likes this.
  20. ElvisCaprice

    ElvisCaprice Forum Resident

    Location:
    Jaco, Costa Rica
    Just plunk down the 50 bones and get JRiver. It's more intuitive for a beginner in Windows. Forget iTunes and be thankful your rid of that prison mess, Apple included. :biglaugh:
    30 day free trial on Jriver
    http://www.jriver.com/download.html
    Flac is your friend.
     
    quicksrt likes this.
  21. vinylkid58

    vinylkid58 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Victoria, B.C.
    Sums it up quite nicely.:righton:

    jeff
     
    Keith V likes this.
  22. Ham Sandwich

    Ham Sandwich Senior Member

    Location:
    Sherwood, OR, USA
    Unless you need iTunes because you have an iPhone or iPad, your best conversion option would be to switch to using a media player like Foobar, MusicBee, Media Monkey, or JRiver Media Center. All of those media players play nice with others and won't trap your media files and metadata in proprietary formats. All those media players are able to play bit-perfect in Windows (something that is difficult to do in iTunes). Your metadata can all be saved in standard tags within the music files, and those standard tags can be read and imported to any of the other media players. It's very easy to switch your library from using Foobar to MusicBee to Media Monkey to JRiver Media Center. It's quite a different matter to switch your library from using iTunes.

    Both Foobar and MusicBee are free as in beer. Media Monkey has a free version that is limited in features with a paid version for more features. JRiver has a trial version that you'll need to pay for after the trial.
     
    SBurke, Kyhl and Keith V like this.
  23. tmtomh

    tmtomh Forum Resident

    Apple made Apple Lossless open source, and its metadata is not proprietary either.
     
  24. Ham Sandwich

    Ham Sandwich Senior Member

    Location:
    Sherwood, OR, USA
    Try exporting all of your metadata from iTunes. Including album art, play counts, playlists, ratings, and other data. Not very easy. It's relatively easy to export and import all that info with the other media players. Not so easy with iTunes.
     
    SBurke likes this.
  25. colinu

    colinu I'm not lazy, I'm energy saving!

    This is true, I have yet to find audio editing software that allows you to create ALAC files on a Windows machine. I use Sound Forge Pro, but have also checked Adobe Audition.
     
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