[doginabag]

Hi all,
 
I have a largish iTunes library which consists of music ripped from CD to apple lossless format.  Not massive, but enough that I really don't want to go and re-rip it all again!
 
I would like to convert this all to flac as my ipod classic has now died and I have no reason to remain tied into the apple way of doing things.  Also using the chromecast audio on my hifi it does not recognise apple lossless files.
 
 
I tried doing this before a few years back with mixed success.  IIRC I used dBpoweramp for the conversion which worked, but the library is very disorganised. Ie the file structure is so that there is a folder for each artist and with a large number of compilation albums there is a mass of folders for loads of artists I don't know just because the have one song feature on one album.
 
What I would like to do is re-rip my iTunes library so that the file structure is something along the lines of album artist > album > track (in original album sequence, not alphabetical).  Is this possible with dBpoweramp or is there another program that would be suitable? 
 
And then moving forward, I will need a way to rip new album straight to flac as I intend to stop using iTunes all together and move over to foobar.
 
Any advice greatly appreciated!

 

[MindsMirror]

If your files are tagged with artist, album, track, and title information, it is easy to automatically organize them into folders the way you want them. I don't use dBpoweramp, when I convert using foobar I use this format string:

%artist%\['['%date%']' %album%\][%disc number%-][%track% ]%title%

 
I don't have compilation albums, but as long as they are tagged consistently, you should be able to come up with a format string for them too.
 
If your files aren't tagged properly, that is what you need to fix first. Mp3tag should help with that. It can also organize the files and folders.
 
EAC is best for ripping CDs. Just make sure you add all the necessary tags to all your rips and it should be easy to keep everything organized. For most albums you can automatically add tags from the freedb or amazon database in EAC or Mp3tag, so you don't have to type the information in manually.