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Lossless to Lossless format
Kargo
04-03-2012
Hey guys,

I have some albums in FLAC format that I ripped from CD a while ago. When I ripped these I was a Windows Media Player user and I've now switched to iTunes to manage my music collection. Unfortunately iTunes doesn't support the FLAC format so I'm going to have to convert them to another lossless format, preferably Apple Lossless. I have a couple of questions before I do this,

Firstly, will converting from FLAC to Apple Lossless lose any of the quality? The main reason I chose to rip my music to a lossless format was to not lose any of the quality.

Secondly, Is there a free program for windows that will allow me to convert FLAC to Apple Lossless format?

Many Thanks
flagpole
04-03-2012
you wont lose any quality no. not just subjectively but actually. the apple lossless encode will be identical to if you had ripped it directly from the cd.

the problem i foresee with converting to apple lossless is that apple are quite protective of their codec and not much else can use it.
chenks
04-03-2012
easiest method would be to convert FLAC to WAV, and then import the WAV into iTunes.
then use iTunes to convert the WAV to ALAC
Dark 1
04-03-2012
Originally Posted by flagpole:
“you wont lose any quality no. not just subjectively but actually. the apple lossless encode will be identical to if you had ripped it directly from the cd.

the problem i foresee with converting to apple lossless is that apple are quite protective of their codec and not much else can use it.”

There's actually nothing to stop any other device maker from adopting ALAC since it's now open source. But AFAIK, none have yet taken the option. But I know VLC plays it.
Dark 1
04-03-2012
I don't know what computer platform you're using, but if it's a Mac, you could use xACT. It won't directly convert from FLAC to ALAC - you still have to use WAV or AIFF as a go-between - but it will do both parts of the conversion without having use iTunes.

There's bound to be a Windows equivalent.
Kargo
04-03-2012
Thanks for the replies all.

I've managed to convert the FLAC files to Apple Lossless using a software called dbPoweramp.

To make things a bit more confusing, I want to keep the Apple lossless copy of the albums on my hard drive and back up drive but would also like to create AAC versions so that I can put them on my iPod. Instead of ripping the CDs again and selecting AAC as the format could I now just directly convert the Apple Lossless files to AAC and would that give me the same quality as if I was to rip the CD again directly to AAC?
Roush
04-03-2012
You can set iTunes to convert high bit rate audio being synched to a device to 128kbps AAC which it does transparently in the background for you. It takes a little longer to sync new music to a device but it means you won't have to worry about manually converting it yourself or about managing a lower bit rate version of your library.

It's in the options pane on the summary tab of the device settings.
flagpole
05-03-2012
Originally Posted by chenks:
“easiest method would be to convert FLAC to WAV, and then import the WAV into iTunes.
then use iTunes to convert the WAV to ALAC”

the problem with wav as a format is it doesn't support tags.
chenks
07-03-2012
Originally Posted by flagpole:
“the problem with wav as a format is it doesn't support tags.”

i didn't suggest keeping it as WAV, i merely said use WAV as a means to get the content into iTunes to then convert to ALAC.
flagpole
07-03-2012
Originally Posted by chenks:
“i didn't suggest keeping it as WAV, i merely said use WAV as a means to get the content into iTunes to then convert to ALAC.”

i know. but in doing that you loose the tags. and have to add them yourself.

in reality all transcoders will convert to wav or raw pcm as an intermediate step. but they'll remember and re-apply the tags.
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