Flac - Something/I Pod

[Wlow]

Hey, can anyone suggest a good method of turning some flac files into something an I pod will play without sacrificing file quality? (Apple lossless)

Ty

 

[TheMarchingMule]

If you have FLAC files, use foobar2000 to convert them to WAV, and then dump the WAV files into iTunes, then convert those WAV files into Apple Lossless (ALAC).

And don't you dare say that the sound will be different, or that one lossless format is inferior to the other in terms of sonic quality, or I swear I will sic some farting beast onto you.

 

[Wlow]

Alright, one more question, will the contrast between lossless and 320kbp be large? Would you consider it an issue?

 

[John Reeves]

Hi,

Install Rockbox on your IPod then you can play FLAC files. Rockbox allows you to boot into either Rockbox or the original IPod firmware on startup.
Cheers

John

 

[Contrastique]

I use Xact to convert FLAC to AIFF. Copy that in iTunes and then convert it to Apple Lossless. Xact is freeware and works perfect for me.

I have no issues with lossless so I haven't bothered converting to 320 kbps so no answer to that one. Try it out and see if you can hear a difference I'd say.

Rockbox could indeed be an option unless you have the iPod Classic, Rockbox doesn't work on them unfortunately.

Edit: Just saw you have the 160gb Classic so you can forget about Rockbox...

 

[Kilane]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheMarchingMule /img/forum/go_quote.gif If you have FLAC files, use foobar2000 to convert them to WAV, and then dump the WAV files into iTunes, then convert those WAV files into Apple Lossless (ALAC). And don't you dare say that the sound will be different, or that one lossless format is inferior to the other in terms of sonic quality, or I swear I will sic some farting beast onto you.

Different... probably not noticeably... but you're still displacing 1's and 0's in the process; so there's a possibility of difference. I'm not prepared to argue anything without studying exactly how flac and aac condense wav files. The only reason I say anything at all is I've pondered it before. Effectively you're wrapping a file into a zip folder with flac (over simplified yes) so I can't think of how that'd be converted to AAC without the process you outlined unless it will UNpack and REpack it on the fly. Or... if you could just dump the entire file to AAC (and I have less ideas on how their format works) is it essentially another wrapper of compression?

Sorry I didn't mean to wax philosophic, maybe someone here can teach me a lesson.

Either way I think there's this LINK! which i've heard good things about from a couple coworkers, it's not free though.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wlow /img/forum/go_quote.gif Alright, one more question, will the contrast between lossless and 320kbp be large? Would you consider it an issue?

That really depends on your source and output how keen your hearing is... etc.

For the longest time I couldn't tell the difference, I'm starting to with the change of gear and some more ideas about what to look for, your results may vary.

 

[Herandu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wlow /img/forum/go_quote.gif Alright, one more question, will the contrast between lossless and 320kbp be large? Would you consider it an issue?

It is a big issue. You would have to spend a lot of money in putting together a more expensive and revealing system in order to hear the difference between a properly encoded 320KBP and an original CD or WAV file. For the majority of people it is not practical to have more than one system setup.
If you are going to listen to your music through an iPOD then you would have to have better hearing than Superman in order to notice a difference. Anyone who tells you otherwise does not own an iPOD and has been using a worthless audio ripper.

 

[trickywombat]

It is truly difficult to tell the difference between 320 kbs and ALAC on an iPod. For iPod playback purposes, I don't think ALAC is worth it.

However, I rip to ALAC before storing my CDs as I don't want to keep more than one copy of a file. Rockbox will play ALAC as well. If I need to put files on my iPod Touch or nano, which have limited space, I transcode the ALAC to around 256, and that seems to work fine.

If you're using a Mac, Max from sbooth.org does a great job transcoding files (including album art and tags) from FLAC to ALAC, AAC or MP3. It's free.

 

[MrBenvolent]

I use Toast Titanium (though it isn't free) to burn the FLAC to a CD image and then mount the image and import straight to iTunes as Apple lossless.

This is on a Mac obviously!

 

[krmathis]

Max does the job nicely.
Just feed it the FLAC files and set it to output Apple Lossless files.

 

[Steve The Egg]

As previously posted, you can go from FLAC to WAV to ALAC. But, I think that's too much trouble for a difference I can't even notice on my iPod. I simply use ALL2LAME and go with 320kbps MP3. With my portable rig I honestly cannot tell the difference. Now, your experience might be different. I recommend doing some A/B comparisons and finding out for yourself. You might just find out the extra work makes a difference for you.

 

[Wlow]

So when playing off of an I pod, even with top end headphones , the difference between the lossless and 320 will be fairly negligible?

 

[Steve The Egg]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wlow /img/forum/go_quote.gif So when playing off of an I pod, even with top end headphones , the difference between the lossless and 320 will be fairly negligible?

No. Depending on the fidelity of the gear you can notice a difference. All I'm saying is it doesn't matter to me because with my gear I can't tell a difference. You should test and compare both formats before making your decision. But if possible keep the original FLAC.