FLAC - Itunes

[jameswilcox]

Hello,

I have a duet and use itunes. Some music i have is flac which I have not used Itunes to play pre the squeezebox. While maintaining itunes as the player in to which i import the bulk of my music, how do i get flac tunes on to my squeezebox?

many thanks,

[ddewey]

Quoting jameswilcox (jameswilcox.3p29vb1237072802 (AT) no-mx (DOT) forums.slimdevices.com):

>
> Hello,
>
> I have a duet and use itunes. Some music i have is flac which I have
> not used Itunes to play pre the squeezebox. While maintaining itunes
> as the player in to which i import the bulk of my music, how do i get
> flac tunes on to my squeezebox?

One solution is to maintain a separate library of transcoded songs
from FLAC to mp3. iTunes does not recognize flac. Dunno if it's
possible at all to have the Squeezebox play FLAC if you stick
exclusively with iTunes.


If you use linux, there's a very slick solution to automatically
transcode flac to mp3: http://mp3fs.sourceforge.net/
I use it to feed my ipod and iphone.

[the-ninth]

I have a duet and use itunes. Some music i have is flac which I have not used Itunes to play pre the squeezebox. While maintaining itunes as the player in to which i import the bulk of my music, how do i get flac tunes on to my squeezebox?

One solution could be to use something like the dBpoweramp Music Converter to transcode them to Apple Lossless. You don't lose any quality (both formats are lossless) but there are two disadvantages, firstly you cannot seeking within a song (move forward or backward) and secondly the SB cannot decode it itself, therefore SC has to do it on playtime, which costs a bit of CPU time.

Personally I have no problem with these two disadvantages and use Apple Lossless, since it is the easiest way that I have found so far to combine iTunes, the SqueezeBox and Lossless music.

See you, Robert

[grrman]

Also, if you're on a Mac platform, you can use Max (http://sbooth.org)to convert FLAC to apple lossless. I agree ddewey to keep separate libraries if you decide to use a different platform in the future.

[jameswilcox]

Thanks very much to all. sbbooth worked just fine. Converted the flac to apple lossless and imported to itunes which the SB then picked up. Am now discerning whether there is a noticeable difference in sound quality between 256mp3 or this apple lossless....

Thanks again,

James

[starcat]

Use Max on MacOS X to transcode flac to Apple Lossless. Use XLD if you have one flac file with cue sheet in order to cut into separate flac tracks and then drop into Max. Import in iTunes, listen with iTunes on your Mac. Point SlimCenter to the iTunes media files and set it to transcode Apple Lossless on the fly when serving to WAV, rescan with SlimCenter and enjoy the same files (and iTunes playlists) also on all your Squeezboxes! No need to have two version of your files. Have fun!

[RonM]

I'm sure I'm demonstrating some fundamental ignorance here, but I'm apparently missing a concept.

If you're using iTunes as the music player/organizer on the computer, and have a library of titles, a flac file included in the library won't be picked up by iTunes. But why won't it be picked up by SC when the library is scanned? Still can't be played through iTunes, but should be playable through SC.

Like I said, it seems I'm missing something here.

R.

[andynormancx]

If you mixed the Apple Lossless and Flac files up like that then SC would see both sets of files and you would have duplicated tracks.

[wellgoodjackson]

Just google search Step by Step Guide on How to Import FLAC to iTunes, you will find a simple solution