Thinking of "switching" to apple lossless

[m1abrams]

Well I recently got a new iPod and my old ways of getting music to it are starting to strain on me. Taking too much time and effort to just get music to listen to.

I currently have all my music in FLAC format and currently use Jriver Media Center to sync the FLAC to an ipod via on-the-fly transcoding. I used the software without much issue with my older 4G ipod, however when I got my iPod classic of course MC did not work with it. MC does now in fact support the new Classics. However I am having various issue with it and some of the issues are old design issues Jriver may never fix.

So I am trying to find another option to have my lossless music available for Squeezebox and my music on my iPod (preferable in a lossy form for size).

Using iTunes for the ipod has its advantages of better support obviously and it has one of the better podcast catchers I have seen. I love my podcasts. iTunes is bad in that in order work well you really need to surrender your music to it and let it do it all. Tagging music outside of iTunes has in past versions caused me headaches.

I am thinking that maybe the best solution would be to surrender to iTunes and convert my FLAC to ALAC (Apple lossless) and let iTunes manage it. Downside is that my music will be lossless on my ipod which currently i can fit my entire collection on the ipod in lossless (have the 160GB ipod) but it leaves much less room for growth and reduces the battery life. Since most of my ipod use is in the car battery life is not that important.

Now I understand to cons with using Apple Lossless with Squeezebox, main one being no FF/REW in track however I do not have that with FLAC right now since I have a 1st gen SB.

Can anyone else talk me out of going from FLAC -> Apple Lossless. If you think my plan is bad, please give me options. I have done the duplicate music route (FLAC and mp3) however managing that drove me up the wall. If you have a streamlined method for handling changes in BOTH directions please share.

[Robin Bowes]

m1abrams wrote:

> Can anyone else talk me out of going from FLAC -> Apple Lossless. If
> you think my plan is bad, please give me options. I have done the
> duplicate music route (FLAC and mp3) however managing that drove me up
> the wall. If you have a streamlined method for handling changes in
> BOTH directions please share.



1. flac2mp3 to convert from flac to mp3

2. *NEVER* make any changes to your mp3 files - apply the changes to the
equivalent flac file and re-run flac2mp3 to sync them.

R.

[m1abrams]

m1abrams wrote:

> Can anyone else talk me out of going from FLAC -> Apple Lossless. If
> you think my plan is bad, please give me options. I have done the
> duplicate music route (FLAC and mp3) however managing that drove me up
> the wall. If you have a streamlined method for handling changes in
> BOTH directions please share.



1. flac2mp3 to convert from flac to mp3

2. *NEVER* make any changes to your mp3 files - apply the changes to the
equivalent flac file and re-run flac2mp3 to sync them.

R.

I did the whole flac2mp3 trick, even wrote my own for fun. However the part of NEVER touching the mp3 is the tough one. I like to rate my files and usually do it through the iPod because that is where a great deal of my music listening time is done nowadays (long commute).

I like the mp3fs deal and currently my slimserver and music reside on a linux box so that is not an issue. However it probably does not handle cover art that is in the same directory, so I would have to maintain cover art seperately within iTunes.

Guess I am getting old and lazy. Maybe MC jriver will fix the biggest issues I have with them and I can just continue with that solution. Anyone have personal experience with any other software that meets these needs (windows, linux or even Mac)?:
1. Sync with ipod classic or will be soon (sync cover art, play stats, and ratings)
2. Transcodes on-the-fly flac to mp3 format for sync
3. Dynamic Playlist ability, big plus if Squeezebox can use the playlists.
4. Podcast fetch ability (optional)
5. Video support that can sync with iPod

[moley6knipe]

I ripped everything to 320kbps CBR mp3 when I got my first box, a Netgear MP101 (you had a choice of wav, wma or mp3!), and now I've got the Squeezebox I think it's time to redo my favourite CDs as lossless. I'm not going to bother to redo things like Hits of 93 Vol. 4 - it's not a classic, you'll be surprised to learn.

So I've looked into the various options, and whilst I know flac is natively supported on the Squeezebox and ALAC isn't, I still think ALAC is the best choice.

1 I use iPod in the car almost exclusively, so battery life not a problem
2 I've never rewound or fast-forwarded anything on either my Netgear or my SB3, so the transcoding doesn't bother me!
3 In my opinion, popping a CD into iTunes and letting it rip it to ALAC involves less work than the various flac stages required
4 I can't be bothered with maintaining two libraries or transcoding flac>somthing else for iPod
5 I've tried to hear differences between flac ripped on EAC and a CD ripped lossless in iTunes, and (on my system at least) I can't. That's the clincher for me!

Anyway, that's my £0.02 worth!

[m1abrams]

1 I use iPod in the car almost exclusively, so battery life not a problem
2 I've never rewound or fast-forwarded anything on either my Netgear or my SB3, so the transcoding doesn't bother me!
3 In my opinion, popping a CD into iTunes and letting it rip it to ALAC involves less work than the various flac stages required
4 I can't be bothered with maintaining two libraries or transcoding flac>somthing else for iPod
5 I've tried to hear differences between flac ripped on EAC and a CD ripped lossless in iTunes, and (on my system at least) I can't. That's the clincher for me!

Anyway, that's my £0.02 worth!

Thanks, I am moving towards that and have similiar usage as you.

For point number 5, EAC and like programs ONLY help when the CD is of poor quality. If you are ripping clean scratch free CDs any ripper should work fine. Also does Apples ripper now have an option for "secure" ripping? I will probably continue to use dbpoweramp for my ripping needs though.

[moley6knipe]

Don't know - because I'm a geek about these things, all my CDs are scratch free and in shop bought condition, so any old thing gets results for me! But iTunes lossless is really easy to rip with, I find.

I can live without totally bit perfect rips if it saves time - I'm never going to have a hi-fi that cares if it's perfect or not!

[ddewey]

Quoting m1abrams (m1abrams.2x9zwz1190403901 (AT) no-mx (DOT) forums.slimdevices.com):

>
> Well I recently got a new iPod and my old ways of getting music to it
> are starting to strain on me. Taking too much time and effort to just
> get music to listen to.
>
> I currently have all my music in FLAC format and currently use Jriver
> Media Center to sync the FLAC to an ipod via on-the-fly transcoding. I
> used the software without much issue with my older 4G ipod, however when
> I got my iPod classic of course MC did not work with it. MC does now in
> fact support the new Classics. However I am having various issue with it
> and some of the issues are old design issues Jriver may never fix.
>
> So I am trying to find another option to have my lossless music
> available for Squeezebox and my music on my iPod (preferable in a lossy
> form for size).
>
> Using iTunes for the ipod has its advantages of better support
> obviously and it has one of the better podcast catchers I have seen. I
> love my podcasts. iTunes is bad in that in order work well you really
> need to surrender your music to it and let it do it all. Tagging music
> outside of iTunes has in past versions caused me headaches.
>
> I am thinking that maybe the best solution would be to surrender to
> iTunes and convert my FLAC to ALAC (Apple lossless) and let iTunes
> manage it. Downside is that my music will be lossless on my ipod which
> currently i can fit my entire collection on the ipod in lossless (have
> the 160GB ipod) but it leaves much less room for growth and reduces the
> battery life. Since most of my ipod use is in the car battery life is
> not that important.
>
> Now I understand to cons with using Apple Lossless with Squeezebox,
> main one being no FF/REW in track however I do not have that with FLAC
> right now since I have a 1st gen SB.
>
> Can anyone else talk me out of going from FLAC -> Apple Lossless. If
> you think my plan is bad, please give me options. I have done the
> duplicate music route (FLAC and mp3) however managing that drove me up
> the wall. If you have a streamlined method for handling changes in
> BOTH directions please share.

I have both an 80 gb ipod and an iphone. The iphone requires the
use of iTunes, so no using MediaMonkey to on-the-fly transcode, as I
can do with the iPod.

I therefore use mp3fs to present my FLAC collection as MP3s to
iTunes. You don't have to DO anything, mp3fs simply presents your
flacs as MP3s to iTunes, which then indexes them. You don't need to
maintain 2 collections! As files are 'called' by iTunes to be
played or loaded, mp3fs transcodes them on the fly. For me, this
solution works very very well.

Bad news - as far as I know, mp3fs is linux only. I run Slimserver
on a linux server, so this is not a big deal to me. My music is on
a Windows RAID partition, which I mount via samba to the linux box,
mount it as mp3 using mp3fs, and then share it back to the Windows
box. As I said, slightly geeky, but it works really well.

http://mp3fs.sourceforge.net

dd

[ceejay]

Thats the first I've heard of mp3fs and it sounds like a very neat idea indeed. It's almost enough to tip me over onto Linux for my Slimserver....

Anyone else with experience of it?

Ceejay