Over the past couple years I have ripped all of my CDs onto my computer. I used WMA lossless as it was very simple and I couldn't think of any reason to use a different format. Now, I'm getting a media streamer (Squeezebox) and it doesn't have native support for WMA lossless. I want to convert my catalog to FLAC, but I don't know what software supports this. Most of the companies that I checked out convert FLAC to WMA but not the other way around. I don't mind spending a few bucks as long as it is a solid product. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
Full Version: Converting WMA lossless to FLAC
foobar2000 is fine. Other softwares: VUPlayer, DBPowerAmp, Winamp...
QUOTE(rhombus00 @ Sep 19 2006, 01:45) 
Over the past couple years I have ripped all of my CDs onto my computer. I used WMA lossless as it was very simple and I couldn't think of any reason to use a different format. Now, I'm getting a media streamer (Squeezebox) and it doesn't have native support for WMA lossless. I want to convert my catalog to FLAC, but I don't know what software supports this. Most of the companies that I checked out convert FLAC to WMA but not the other way around. I don't mind spending a few bucks as long as it is a solid product. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
www.foobar2000.org
QUOTE(guruboolez @ Sep 19 2006, 01:52)
foobar2000 is fine. Other softwares: VUPlayer, DBPowerAmp, Winamp...
Okay, I've tried foobar and dbPowerAmp to convert WMA Lossless, and I'm having metadata issues. The two things are:
1. Embedded cover art is apparently not being copied over. Should it be, or is this something FLAC doesn't support, and I just need to put JPEGs in folders?
2. I'm not sure what's happening with the Album Artist tag. According to Tag&Rename, it's not being populated. According to Foobar, it is. And if I go into Tag&Rename and populate it explicitly, the metadata in Foobar looks no different. What's going on here, and how can I figure out which of these well-regarded apps is insane?
QUOTE(mkozlows @ Sep 29 2006, 21:21)
QUOTE(guruboolez @ Sep 19 2006, 01:52)
foobar2000 is fine. Other softwares: VUPlayer, DBPowerAmp, Winamp...
1. Embedded cover art is apparently not being copied over. Should it be, or is this something FLAC doesn't support, and I just need to put JPEGs in folders?
2. I'm not sure what's happening with the Album Artist tag. According to Tag&Rename, it's not being populated. According to Foobar, it is. And if I go into Tag&Rename and populate it explicitly, the metadata in Foobar looks no different. What's going on here, and how can I figure out which of these well-regarded apps is insane?
IIRC, WMA doesn't have any any support for embeded images. all it does is store AlbumArt.jpg files in the folder that the files are in.
with foobar2000, make sure you select the files, select Tagging > Reload Info from File(s) to make sure that the info is correct. the thing about foobar2000 is that it doesn't update the tags when another program does so.
QUOTE(Mangix @ Sep 30 2006, 01:15)
IIRC, WMA doesn't have any any support for embeded images. all it does is store AlbumArt.jpg files in the folder that the files are in.
No, it does have embedded image support. It also puts the files in the folder, with multiple names (depending on how exactly the cover art is populated).
Anyway, I figured that since no FLAC applications actually use the embedded cover art, just copying over the folder.jpg files would be good enough for me, and that seems to work (thankfully I converted into a directory structure that matched up with the old one, so I could xcopy all the folder.jpg files).
WMA uses a sort of apic (id3v2) compatible frame. Currently FLAC cannot have embedded images, unless you tag to id3v2 (was it rockbox that used album art with falc and id3v2?) or wait a few months (josh is working on a new release of flac with an embedded images).
yep, cover art support in FLAC is done, a beta should be raedy in a couple of weeks.
www.poikosoft.com, worth the money.
Hi,
I thought Squeezebox supports WMA lossless (at leadt according to thier website).
On a side note, how do you like the Squeezebox? Thanks
Over the past couple years I have ripped all of my CDs onto my computer. I used WMA lossless as it was very simple and I couldn't think of any reason to use a different format. Now, I'm getting a media streamer (Squeezebox) and it doesn't have native support for WMA lossless. I want to convert my catalog to FLAC, but I don't know what software supports this. Most of the companies that I checked out convert FLAC to WMA but not the other way around. I don't mind spending a few bucks as long as it is a solid product. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
I thought Squeezebox supports WMA lossless (at leadt according to thier website).
On a side note, how do you like the Squeezebox? Thanks
QUOTE(rhombus00 @ Sep 19 2006, 01:45)
Over the past couple years I have ripped all of my CDs onto my computer. I used WMA lossless as it was very simple and I couldn't think of any reason to use a different format. Now, I'm getting a media streamer (Squeezebox) and it doesn't have native support for WMA lossless. I want to convert my catalog to FLAC, but I don't know what software supports this. Most of the companies that I checked out convert FLAC to WMA but not the other way around. I don't mind spending a few bucks as long as it is a solid product. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
Squeezebox only supports WMAL by transcoding to FLAC or equiv. at the server level. Their marketing is intentionally vague. 
FLAC is decoded natively without transcoding. Either way, the end point audio output is the same.
FLAC is decoded natively without transcoding. Either way, the end point audio output is the same.
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