Converting to Digital Audio, the Mac, and iTunes

[baneste]

For anyone interested in making digital audio a bigger part of their audio life, why you might want to consider doing so, and how to do it using a Mac and iTunes, you may find the article at https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16985530/iTunes.htm helpful. Part I describes why I decided that "going digital" made the most sense for me. Part II describes in detail how I did it, the software I used, the mistakes I made, and how I'd do it differently if I were starting over.

 

[ronscat]

Dang baneste, I would guess that took a bunch of your time to write that (after you did all the work)!!
Good job!!

 

[jsixis]

I started downloading flac files of my LP's. (people telling me I'm stealing in 1,2,3)
Then I made flac files of all my CD's.

If I could do it over, which I will have to I'll go to windows lossless wav format since the flac program I used won't let me convert the files to mp3's and I want 320k mp3's for my mp3 player I plug into the car and work van.

I avoid I tunes, I have a USB portable 1 tb hard drive that the music stays on plus I rent server space as my "cloud"

 

[robgmn]

I started downloading flac files of my LP's. (people telling me I'm stealing in 1,2,3)
Then I made flac files of all my CD's.

If I could do it over, which I will have to I'll go to windows lossless wav format since the flac program I used won't let me convert the files to mp3's and I want 320k mp3's for my mp3 player I plug into the car and work van.

MediaMonkey and JRiver Media center will both convert from FLAC to MP3 with no problems at all.

 

[baneste]

Dang baneste, I would guess that took a bunch of your time to write that (after you did all the work)!!
Good job!!

Actually, I wrote this mainly as a journal for myself while I was doing the work. It filled the time while waiting for programs to convert, etc. I thought it would be a helpful reference/reminder of what I did. Converting it to an article didn't require a lot of extra work. Hopefully, it will be helpful to some looking to covert. Thanks so much for the kind words.

 

[baneste]

I started downloading flac files of my LP's. (people telling me I'm stealing in 1,2,3)
Then I made flac files of all my CD's.

If I could do it over, which I will have to I'll go to windows lossless wav format since the flac program I used won't let me convert the files to mp3's and I want 320k mp3's for my mp3 player I plug into the car and work van.

I avoid I tunes, I have a USB portable 1 tb hard drive that the music stays on plus I rent server space as my "cloud"

You don't need to repeat the process or go to WAVs to get to 320kbps MP3s. Download Foobar 2000 from www.foobar2000.org. You may need to also download a LAME encoder (Sorry, I just can't recall if that's included now. it's been a while since I've used Foobar). Once it's set up, you can batch convert your FLAC files directly and seamlessly to 320Kbps MP3s. No need to convert to WAVs. Foobar (along with VLC) is also a fine player for the Windows environment.

Hope this is helpful!

 

[paganboy]

If I could do it over, which I will have to I'll go to windows lossless wav format since the flac program I used won't let me convert the files to mp3's and I want 320k mp3's for my mp3 player I plug into the car and work van.

If you are just looking to convert and not edit etc, then video converter here will suit you well. It even has a setting to optimize for iOS devices.

I used to use it back in the olden days when I had need in converting files.

never had a problem with it.