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Converting FLAC to ALAC on Macs

post #1 of 46
11/17/08 at 1:31am
Thread Starter 
Is there a free program that can convert FLAC songs to ALAC on the Mac platform? I know there is one called dbPoweramp but that is a pay program and also for windows only?

I buy music from a site called Magnatune: license music and MP3 download and they have high quality downloads for the albums that you purchase. You can choose FLAC or WAV but no ALAC. FLAC makes the download quicker (their servers seem to be a little slow) but converting to ALAC which I'd like for iTunes archival is tricky.

If there are no good solutions for FLAC>ALAC I can just download the WAV and import that into iTunes, and have iTunes convert to ALAC and get a perfect ALAC copy right? Then I can delete the WAVs to save up space.

Ruahrc
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post #2 of 46
11/17/08 at 1:40am
From my experience (I did some heavy searching about this issue) there is no easy alternative. For FLAC files, I run them through a program called xACT (which is a free download) to convert into AIFF, then drag the files into itunes. Then I have to re-tag all the song information and convert to ALAC.

(sorry)
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post #3 of 46
11/17/08 at 1:47am
There actualy is an easy alternative, and it pretty much the best for transcoding on a Mac. It's called Max .

I use that for all my conversions, as I rip in EAC on the PC to ALAC, then transcode to ALAC on the Mac. I normally set it to process 10 files at a time; took a few hours only for my entire library, and it keeps all the tags in-tact.
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post #4 of 46
11/17/08 at 4:05am
thanks xenithon, i put it to work right away
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post #5 of 46
11/17/08 at 5:22am
What i've done is to convert my flac albums into cd images through foobar and rip it out again on itunes to alac. Do you guys think there will be any quality loss from the process? thanks.
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post #6 of 46
11/17/08 at 5:33am
x2 on Max.
A great free (open-source) audio CD and file converter, which support all the most popular codecs/formats.
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post #7 of 46
11/17/08 at 5:38am
Quote:
Originally Posted by krmathis View Post
x2 on Max.
A great free (open-source) audio CD and file converter, which support all the most popular codecs/formats.
Hi Krmathis, what do you think of the method that i employ? Thanks.
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post #8 of 46
11/17/08 at 5:46am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Aurven View Post
Hi Krmathis, what do you think of the method that i employ? Thanks.
Its probably fine.
I don't see why you want to go that route though, when there are applications out there that transcode directly from FLAC to Apple Lossless. Easier, and less likely that errors occur.
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post #9 of 46
11/17/08 at 8:17am
hmmm, i tried using dbpoweramp but the resultant alac files seems to have some kind of error and it skip when i try to play them on my ipod. Is there a windows equivalent for max? thanks for your help.
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post #10 of 46
11/17/08 at 10:39am
Another vote for Max - it uses coreaudio too, so you can be pretty much certain it will be iTunes compatible. You can also use it to make AACs, with a finer degree of control than iTunes gives. (and it still uses coreaudio).

Aurven - try exporting to wav and importing that to iTunes. Won't save tagging data, though.
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post #11 of 46
11/17/08 at 12:29pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ruahrc View Post
If there are no good solutions for FLAC>ALAC I can just download the WAV and import that into iTunes, and have iTunes convert to ALAC and get a perfect ALAC copy right? Then I can delete the WAVs to save up space.

Ruahrc
This is what I do! Easy alternative albeit with a little redundant housekeeping in iTunes to delete the WAV's.
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post #12 of 46
11/17/08 at 1:29pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Aurven View Post
hmmm, i tried using dbpoweramp but the resultant alac files seems to have some kind of error and it skip when i try to play them on my ipod. Is there a windows equivalent for max? thanks for your help.
Because dbpoweramp its own Apple Lossless codec, reverse engineered from Apple's one. Its not 100% compatible, I have read.
Max is Mac OS X only.
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post #13 of 46
11/17/08 at 4:18pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks for the suggestion re: Max. I'm having a problem with it though...

In the format preferences I added an Apple Lossless format for the output, but the extension seems to be .caf and not .m4a like I get when I ALAC in iTunes? I can't seem to import this .caf into iTunes, and if I manually change the extension of the output to .m4a in the finder and try to play it back it doesn't work.

What am I missing?

Ruahrc

edit:Nevermind I figured it out. I was selecting Apple CAF in the format list instead of MPEG-4. At first I didn't know you could choose ALAC as the format when using MPEG-4. I still have a problem now with file naming though. The outputs always seem to be named the same as the input file, regardless of what I define in the output tab in the prefs.
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post #14 of 46
11/18/08 at 1:10am
Max should append proper extensions to the files, however either way you can fix this problem by setting a different default location to save the files - I do this as I need to run replaygain on them before importing them to itunes anyway.
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post #15 of 46
11/18/08 at 5:54am
Ruahrc. Max rename the files based on the output settings and metadata in the input files. My guess are that your input files don't have complete tagging.
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