On Windows "foobar2000" is fantastic for playback and transcoding, looks pretty basic, but performs well and has lot's of plugins to modify look and feel as well as extra functionality.
On Mac, XLD is great for ripping and transcoding, but I'm not sure what's the hot favourite for playback these days.
Oh snap! Haven't used Windows or Mac outside of occasional work use for >10 years - all BSD or Linux (mostly Debian since then)... I've heard good reports from people using foobar2000 under Wine, but on Linux there's many fine options depending on your preferences - Audacious or Deadbeef are more like foobar, or there's Quod Libet or Ex Falso if you prefer something "bigger". Personally I haven't used these GUI players for a while as I tend to have a terminal window always open and just point `mpv` to a directory, playlist or file. I use `ffmpeg` (compiled with recent codecs) for transcoding and for ripping there's `RubyRipper` or `abcde`.
iTunes doesn't support FLAC, but it does support ALAC, whose implementation is also open-source. And it has a neat feature where it can store ALAC on your computer, and automatically transcode to a (much smaller) lossy format when syncing to a mobile device.
Yeah, I'm aware, I just feel like FLAC is the more popular, more multi-platform friendly/preferred option, definitely seems to have more momentum behind it, it's easier to buy FLAC then ALAC for one.
Buying options shouldn‘t be a concern at all as long as they are lossless - you simply convert them to the lossless format of your choice. There won‘t be any quality lost. Lossless to lossless is still lossless.
Your format of choice should be dictated by your mobile platform - if you use iOS device or simply like iTunes, go for ALAC. Any decent player will handle FLAC and ALAC, but Apple requires ALAC. If Apple isn‘t a concern for you, there‘s no reason to use anything but FLAC.
Personally, I use ALAC since I use iOS. So far there haven‘t been any downsides.
> Buying options shouldn‘t be a concern at all as long as they are lossless - you simply convert them to the lossless format of your choice. There won‘t be any quality lost. Lossless to lossless is still lossless.
Absolutely, but it's an extra step that to me brings little practical benefit, since FLAC is already the source format & is more widely used practically everywhere outside Apple's ecosystem.
> Your format of choice should be dictated by your mobile platform - if you use iOS device or simply like iTunes, go for ALAC. Any decent player will handle FLAC and ALAC, but Apple requires ALAC. If Apple isn‘t a concern for you, there‘s no reason to use anything but FLAC.
I use iOS as my smartphone platform for now, (waiting for the Librem 5), but Linux on the desktop, so that's why I prefer FLAC. It's worth noting however that iOS itself does support FLACs perfectly well, just iTunes doesn't, (I prefer not to deal with iTunes at all, so not a concern for me), but if you use something like Airsonic, you're set.
I do have a set of AirPlay speakers however, since I wanted something wireless, but still lossless, which kind of means AirPlay is the only option & that does transcode my FLACs to ALAC on the fly, so there's definitely an area where I use ALAC, even if indirectly.
Heh. I'm actually on a Linux desktop but figured most people would reply with an iTunes-based solution. Cmus looks interesting I'd love to hear what your workflow is for converting, naming, tagging, getting artwork, etc.
Heh, nice :-) Yeah, cmus is incredibly convenient for rapid playlist management once you learn the shortcuts, (there's an excellent quick tutorial $ man cmus-tutorial).
FLACs from 7d/HDTracks are already named & tagged properly so I only deal with it occasionally and when I do, https://picard.musicbrainz.org works well for acquiring tags & artwork.
Also I haven't used it myself, but there's a lot of positive chatter around https://github.com/beetbox/beets for tagging etc. I just prefer not to have my files touched in such an automated way :-)
I rarely actually convert from FLACs these days, since I have set up Airsonic, (https://github.com/airsonic/airsonic), on my home server. I now have access to the lossless files directly, from anywhere.
When I do convert, I usually just use https://github.com/kassoulet/soundconverter - nothing fancy, but does the job. I do not maintain my whole library in both, lossless & lossy formats since I have set up Airsonic, but when I do want to save data & do not have access to WiFi, I just let Airsonic use lame to transcode to MP3s on the fly, (rare).
If you cannot do that, don't have regular access to data on the go etc. I'd honestly just use https://ecasound.seul.org/ecasound/Documentation/examples.ht... and put it in a script that checks if a .flac file in a folder or subfolder has a corresponding .mp3/.ogg file and convert if not, then just use find to filter out the format I don't want to copy over. :-)
Awesome. Thank you for a thorough response. Airsonic looks like just what I want, too. I have a FreeNAS system and would love to centralize my music catalog there.
Over the years I've ripped my CDs maybe 4 or 5 times. I used to have a PowerBook G4 and an early iPod, so I ripped to M4A/AAC. Nothing else played that, so then I went MP3 with storage limitations of the day dictating bitrate. Now, I just want to rip to FLAC and never deal with that again.
I use an older version of Media Monkey on the PC. I would have upgraded to a newer version but they removed the interface to the LAME encoder. This was before the patents expired so I should check them out again, but the old version does everything I need. I quite like it.
I made comment a little further up before I saw this, but there's lossless format that iTunes and Apple devices support called ALAC. You can convert to and from FLAC files with avconv.
