iTunes and .flac?
iMac 24", 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB memory, 23" Dell 2nd monitor, Mac OS X (10.6.2), 2- 1TB HD, 750GB HD, Ipod Touch 2nd G, audio-technica ATH-AD700
iMac 24", 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB memory, 23" Dell 2nd monitor, Mac OS X (10.6.2), 2- 1TB HD, 750GB HD, Ipod Touch 2nd G, audio-technica ATH-AD700
I'd like to jump in on this conversation and ask about iPad. Can iPad handle higher resolution music files. I use MAX to convert Wav files from HD Tracks to AIFF 32bit so they play on iTunes and stream to Apple TV. But I can't put them on my iPod. So finally can they be put on an iPad. According to the literature they can. Please has anybody done this.
If you're running just iTunes from Windows then you have to convert the FLAC file using another software. I used MediaMonkey with the highest possible MP4 settings and imported them into iTunes.
But it isn't good enough.
iTunes should support FLAC format.
WarriorAnt wrote:
Does iTunes play .flac files?
No.
In fact, Flac is very similar to Apples lossless codec, used by iTunes. Nevertheless, there is no navtive support for that codec in iTunes.
I use XLD lossless decoder to convert flac to lossless. Works perfect, fast and with quality.
Lupunus
Having compared FLAC, AAC, OGG VORBIS, MP3 and .WAV I have to say I wouldn't go back to aac, mp3 or ogg (although ogg and aac do sound better than mp3). I therefore don't use i-player as I find it horribly restrictive and have switched to a Cowon J3 as a music and video player as it plays all the above formats (yes it does play aac if they are in m4a format, not m4p) as it sounds so much better than an ipod (the fact that you can hear a difference between high bit rate AACs and MP3s on it says a lot about the quality of the converters and headphone amp) plus the battery lasts 50 hours, nuff said. And no I don't have any connection with Cowon and I do own a macbook and other Apple stuff, I just don't rate the the ipod or ipad as a music player, great for other things though.
I just stopped using iTunes (even if I like it) and now I use winamp to play and manage the lists, it also have a plugin to use with iPod, takes a bit more time (not significant imo) to convert and load to the device and I strongly recomend anyone using it to upload only album by album (it seems to miss multiple albums sometimes).
Anyway I keep updating iTunes all the time hoping for Flac fully support, I love my iPod but if for any reason I need to get other similar device I will get something with full native Flac support.
So keep crossing fingers for it, imo more users should complain and request this feature, people that have high end quality audio systems want quality I vote for Flac.
Max is powerful. Does it support OS X Lion. I saw the last update is 29 August 2009.
I did not give it a try. I just downloaded Bigasoft FLAC Converter from the step-by-step guide
http://www.bigasoft.com/articles/how-to-import-flac-to-itunes.html
Converting FLAC to apple lossless increases the compatibility of the FLAC audio files, so I can backup my music to iCloud, sync to iPhone.
I found a brilliant app specifically designed for high quality audio playback that integrates with iTunes, call Audirvana. I was actually looking for an audiophile player and was very happy to have found this.
It also includes a clever tool called "Audirvana Proxies", that either tricks iTunes into managing the FLAC files (it still cannot play them, they play in Aurdirvana when you press play in iTunes). Or, it will convert the files into an iTunes acceptable format, if you want to transfer them to an iPod for example. It is not perfect, but with regular updates it could be. It is the best I have used so far. One other thing, after the trial period, it is not cheap at $74! This is partly due to the cost of licensing the filters I expect, and it is a premium product, very well designed, the improvement in sound quality even on my 27" iMac internal Speakers is astounding! So, one for the connoisseurs, but if the FLAC integration continues to improve then this could be the perfect partner for iTunes. And if you already have a large FLAC collection, chances are you take sound quality very seriously…
http://audirvana.com - free trial then pay to upgrade
There is a free (old) version here to: http://code.google.com/p/audirvana - not sure whether the iTunes integration is any good in this version or not.
Something else to consider is MP3FS (http://khenriks.github.com/mp3fs/) which is fairly easy to install on a Mac using Macports (install Macports and then type "port install mp3fs"!). This creates a read-only mirrored drive that transcodes FLAC into MP3 in real-time - so there is no need to have two copies! There is a nice article on this from the author of Bliss, another great bit of music organisation software, here
iTunes and .flac?