Best way to Convert FLAC files to Apple Lossless without losing your t Options

[Johnnyplay]

When I was going through this forums, I found that they are many topics posted by users having problem converting Lossless Audio files to Apple Lossless.
And whenever you convert them one or the other thing is always missing or unsatisfying, like when you convert to Apple Lossless using dBpoweramp, iPod skips and many other.

But by using this simple way you can easily create your Apple Lossless Library keeping all your tags intact in audio files.

So here we begin:

1. Import all your library or songs to MediaMonkey, it decodes every format possible, because of Winamp plugins.
2. Make sure all the tags are present in the audio files and if they are not I mean any file is not tagged then tag it with the web option.
3. Select each and every file and then left click and select Send To->Rip/Convert->Destination.
4. On the next dialog box, choose the format to WMA Lossless, and change the destination something like any of these two:
a. <destination>\<artist>\<album>\<track#> - <album> - <tittle>
b. <destination>\<album>\<track#> - <album> - <tittle>
By doing this mediamonkey will automatically organize your files according to Artist or Album as you choose.
5. Close mediamonkey, and open itunes, then choose the default CD Ripping format to Apple Lossless, from preferences.
6. Then Import the folder where you've converted the WMA's, and then itunes will ask you to convert those WMA's to Apple Lossless, then choose yes.
7. After/before conversion there will be an option dialog popping up, asking for deleting the WMA tracks from the library, choose yes, but I think think this option is useless as itunes doesn't support WMA tracks, it just converts them and adds them to the library.

That's it, you're done, what you just need to do now is add those files to your iPod and you'll notice each and every tag is there, even Albumarts of your audio files are present(That's the Cream Of every iPod).

[chu121su12]

Just convert them to WAV and ask iTunes to make the ALAC version. Then find the converted tracks in iTunes library folder, put them to foobar and copy the tag from the original FLAC files.

Quite a hassle, but you can save some registry by not installing additional program / codec.
And it's faster than doing multiple transcoding from FLAC > WMA > m4a.

Edit: I just realized, the album art wont get copied, so you have to do it separately.

This post has been edited by chu121su12: Feb 4 2010, 13:42

[Kiddomike]

Just convert them to WAV and ask iTunes to make the ALAC version. Then find the converted tracks in iTunes library folder, put them to foobar and copy the tag from the original FLAC files.

Quite a hassle, but you can save some registry by not installing additional program / codec.
And it's faster than doing multiple transcoding from FLAC > WMA > m4a.

Edit: I just realized, the album art wont get copied, so you have to do it separately.

I've done this and I have no problems with it. I just noticed something, my songs were 1411 kbps in WAV form then it became 754 kbps when in ALAC. Is this a significant decrease or is it just because of Apple's compression? (Newbie here.)

[trout]

... because it is lossless, the audio that it contains is identical to the audio in the wav files.

Yes, and it is not just identical as in ''essentially the same'', but identical as in ''100% exactly the same''. If the source material was 1411 kbps then no matter what the compressed bitrate is, it will be played back at 1411 kbps.