Quote:
Originally Posted by silentperfection
Blessing do you use apple lossless? Just curious.
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Yeah, I have copies of my music in apple lossless and 256 AAC. I upgraded from a 1G to 4G iPod primarily for lossless support, but the battery life drain was too much to warrant its use, so made the AAC versions of everything. Since I have the space I've kept the ALAC versions for home use, but have toyed with keeping just one. In fact I just got rid of a Roku Soundbridge primarily because it didn't have native ALAC playback (though I preferred the Airport Express sound overall). Rambling answer, but yes I use Apple Lossless.
I toyed with the same dual approach, but with FLAC, before ALAC came about. I used FLACer and MacFLAC to encode/decode and mostly Macamp Lite X for playback. When I switched I moved a few files over, but mostly reripped. If you go from FLAC to ALAC, just watch as you may lose your tags. FLAC, as you probably know, doesn't have great tag support, and WAV has none, so if you can find some process to go to AIFF instead of WAV, you may be ahead of the game. My FLAC files had zero tags, so it was easier to just rerip.
I've turned into a big fan of OS X after 19 years on the PC (and programming MS ASP during the day). I'd encourage you to give the platform a shot. Although on the audio side there are less options. the Apple system of AAC/ALAC (though MP3/WAV/AIFF are supported), iPod, iTunes/AirTunes, Rendezvous and Airport Express is actually pretty encompassing, once you get your music inside (right codec, etc.). it's nice now to open my laptop in the living room, launch iTunes, navigate music on my bedroom desktop and stream it to my stereo. Then again all that can be done on Windows too now (or with a combo household).
A couple other OS X only apps to look at:
iTunes-LAME encoder:
http://www.blacktree.com/apps/iTunes-LAME/index.php
Wonderful audio programs from Rogue Amoeba:
http://www.rogueamoeba.com/
Canz3D:
http://www.midnightwalrus.com/Canz3D/ (works well with above Audio Hijack Pro).
