I have decided to migrate from FLAC to Apple Lossless...

So far everything seems to progress without problems and this post is just to share my experience.

I was using FLAC to archive ripped CD.
After properly tagging the tracks with TGF I converted the songs with lame aps and imported them to iTunes.

My BOX of FLAC files was supposed to be the "original" source, up-to-date, well tagged etc. from which I at any time could burn a CD or encode for iTunes with my favorite encoder of the month.

I usually listen to music at the computer, in the living room or using an iPod mini when biking/walking.

Eventually I realised that it takes more work to keep the BOX and iTunes in sync, than I expected. If I found a mistake in a tag I first had to correct it in the BOX and then encode the song to get it into iTunes, loosing my play info (play count, last played and rating) in the process.

Now since I originally decided to go with FLAC a few things have changed:
- iTunes now do lossless,
- iTunes can be controlled by simple scripts through its OLE interface, and
- AirPort Express with AirTunes allows streaming of lossless music with optical output.

So rather than just having my lossless files stored on the harddisk for archiving purposes I will be enjoying lossless playback on both the computer and the stereo in the living room.

Original songs in iTunes will be either lossless, mp3 or m4p, depending on how I acquired the songs.

I will also keep an encoded version of each song in iTunes for use on the iPod and to distinguish these songs from the originals I use the following notation:
- Album name of songs encoded from lossless are prefixes by Φ (Greek capital letter Phi)
- Album name of songs transcoded (sigh) from lossy are prefixes by Ψ (Greek capital letter Psi)

By using smart playlists in iTunes only one set of songs is visible at the time.
I use a small script that I wrote to update the original songs with play info

That's similar to what I do, actually. I keep lossless copies on the computer for archiving and playback at home alongside lossy versions for my iPod.

Now if only iTunes was smart enough to handle the lossless/lossy dichotomy automatically (i.e. not showing both copies of the same song, and playing/synching the appropriate versions for the appropriate devices).

[quote=sehested,Nov 5 2004, 04:37 PM]
I have decided to migrate from FLAC to Apple Lossless...

Love that gapless support that you get with Apple Lossless

[quote=mdmuir,Nov 6 2004, 03:12 PM]
[quote=sehested,Nov 5 2004, 04:37 PM]
I have decided to migrate from FLAC to Apple Lossless...

Love that gapless support that you get with Apple Lossless
[/quote]

If it's not gapless, it's not lossless. That's what keeps me from using it.

Huh?...

AFAIK Apple Lossless is working perfectly as of iTunes 4.7.

If I listen to Pink Floyd's the Dark Side of the Moon, there are no gaps between the tracks. If encode that with Apple lossless and play it back, there will be a gap between EVERY track. So, if it can not accurately reproduce the original sound of the CD, it is not lossless to me.

Apple tries to address this issue by using a crossfader in iTunes.

Apple Lossless IS gapless, however iTunes & iPods are not. iTunes & iPods cannot even play WAV & AIFF files without gaps where compression is not even an issue. I am able to play Apple Lossless without gaps through Slim Devices SlimServer & Softsqueeze for example. I am hopeful the gapless issue in iTunes will be addressed in iTunes 5 but I doubt it.

Sure, gapless is not supported by iTunes.

But AFAIK Apple Lossless IS lossless as of version 4.7 of iTunes.

IIRC prior to version 4.7 of iTunes there was a bug in Apple Lossless that could chop of as much as 1/10 of a second of the end of the track.


Anyway gapless is NOT supported by neither iTunes nor the iPod and I hope that you have all signed the petition to get Apple to include gapless playback in the future. So far 3480 persons have signed it.

In the meantime I will enjoy my non gapless music

but damn Apple everytime I listen to The Wall, War of the Worlds, Dark Side of the Moon, Nabucco,...

How do you browse your "Phi" collection using the album browser?? I thought that when you are in a playlist you can just see the list, not the album bowser! Anyway it's a good idea that of a prefix!

Can't you get some kind of plug-in to make iTunes play gapless? How "big" are the gaps you're talking about here.

I use Winamp, and have an iAudio M3, and I hear people whinging about gaps that I've never heard of or detected in any of my hardware or software which I use for audio playback

You can switch on the browser in any playlist using Edit - Show Browser (Ctrl+B)

That's where smart playlists come into play. You can make a smart playlist of all albums containing the letter Phi, and then browse just that playlist. It makes it easy to separate multiple versions of the same song, but it's kind of hackish. It would be nice if iTunes handled this on its own.

I do not think this is necessary: with smart playlist "Kind contains Lossless", "Kind contains AAC", and "Kind contains MPEG" you can seperate the files depending on codec. You can then build other playlist, by referencing these playlists (e.g.: "Playlist is 'Kind: AAC'").

Greetings,
Rob

Why don't you turn on the crossfader and set the time to 0?

I do, but there is a glitch in the transition between the tracks.

When I play the tracks in foobar the transition is perfect.

Because then everything plays back gapless. That's even more annoying than everything playing with gaps.

M3 in the house.

Actually there is a way, at least on Mac. There is a tool called ITunes Library manager sold at the following website:

http://www.malcolmadams.com/itunes/itinfo/...rarymanager.php

I have two iTunes library. The first is in Apple Lossless Format and is stored on a 200GB drive. The second is in AAC 128 for my iPod and is stored on a 40GB drive. It is very easy to switch between the libraries with this tool. It only runs on a Mac though.

Sean

I think what you're saying is, people who rely on iTunes are prime candidates to use ALAC. IIRC, we posted that the day they announced the codec. Not exactly news.

I think you have gapless playback confused with gap killers. Gapless doesn't mean it kills the silence that is in the original file, it means it plays back without any additional silence. So any gaps already in the original CD will still be preserved during gapless playback.

edit: deleted cause I replied before i googled...