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Backstage: Paul's Workshop => Audio-related Tech Advice, Support & Discussion => Topic started by: tross on April 03, 2007, 11:00:22 AM

Title: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: tross on April 03, 2007, 11:00:22 AM
So im looking to play some shn files on my mac, so i downloaded Macamp lite x, then downloaded the shorten plugin, but can't figure out how to make it happen.  any help would be greatly appreciated
Title: Re: Macamp lite
Post by: jephrey on April 03, 2007, 04:11:00 PM
I had used that method in the past (meaning 5 years ago), but since, haven't listened to flac/shn, I always convert.  Sorry I can't help, but it did work for me at one point.

Try this...  I might try it too.

http://cogosx.sourceforge.net/ (http://cogosx.sourceforge.net/)

J
Title: Re: Macamp lite
Post by: tross on April 03, 2007, 10:03:18 PM
thanks alot jephrey, that got it going.  :banana: :beers:
Title: Re: Macamp lite
Post by: Casey Lenahan on April 03, 2007, 10:36:56 PM
Quote from: jephrey on April 03, 2007, 04:11:00 PM
I had used that method in the past (meaning 5 years ago), but since, haven't listened to flac/shn, I always convert.  Sorry I can't help, but it did work for me at one point.

Try this...  I might try it too.

http://cogosx.sourceforge.net/ (http://cogosx.sourceforge.net/)

J

Hey Jephrey what do you use to convert???

Ive been using this old ass program called Magic Jelly Bean Software but i was looking for something better.
Title: Re: Macamp lite
Post by: jephrey on April 03, 2007, 10:52:54 PM
xACT  best out there.  Most macheads use it.

J
Title: Re: Macamp lite
Post by: haleakalari on May 09, 2007, 03:38:43 PM
ditto on xACT, it is the mac equivalent of mkwACT for windows, if not better. when it comes to playing shorten files on mac it is a toss up between play and cog. you can get the programs mentioned from the following locations;

xACT - http://mac.majorgeeks.com/download5504.html
Cog - http://cogosx.sourceforge.net/
Play - http://sbooth.org/Play/
Title: Re: Macamp lite
Post by: jephrey on May 09, 2007, 05:05:18 PM
Sweet, never saw play before, but I've been out of the loop because my first task after archiving is to get stuff out of shn/flac and into apple lossless.  I've altered my system so I don't listen to flac/shn at all.  However, it looks like the resources to play that stuff is coming along nice.

J
Title: Re: Macamp lite
Post by: haleakalari on May 09, 2007, 10:20:21 PM
i wish i had enough hard-drive space or enough hard-drives laying around to keep a lossless archive of all my shows, but this is not the case... yet. for a whiiiile now i have just stuck with converting all my lossless music to ogg at a 5.55 quality setting for sbds and a 7.18 quality setting for audience recordings, with a lowpass filter set at approximately 19500Hz. i do keep shows that have sentimental value, (IE: ones i have attended where something special or unexpected happened, or if the date of the show was around mine or a loved one's birthday etc..) in their original lossless formats though. but one day when i have enough money to splurge, hopefully soon, i am totally buying a quad-core mac with two 500gb hard-drives. for now though, i will be fine with my 80gb one.
Title: Re: Macamp lite
Post by: tet on May 18, 2007, 01:26:57 PM
Cog just put up their own web page, and their developer squashed a bug that kept SHN playback from working properly, so now it's really the best option for gapless, lossless audio playback on a Mac:

the new main site is:  http://cogx.org


and go to http://cogx.org/development.php  for the latest 'nightly' build.  they are marked as Unstable, but it's been quite stable for me, and better than the Release/Stable versions that have very few features (SHN support is shitty on those). 
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: mattstick on August 04, 2007, 09:44:06 AM
I can't believe I did'nt see this thread until last night.

Great playa! +K for the tetman & jeph
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: mattstick on August 04, 2007, 11:26:08 AM

What do you guys use to edit the tags on the FLAC files?
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: Caravan2001 on August 04, 2007, 12:08:03 PM
yeah, sweet apps...I always convert most everything...this rocks, thank you
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: newplanet7 on August 04, 2007, 07:43:08 PM
I just use nero media player and it plays flacs/shns/apes ...etc
I also use nero to burn and I don't have to convert flacs...
Just drag and drop. I like to keep it simple.-t
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: tet on August 04, 2007, 08:12:52 PM
Quote from: newplanet7 on August 04, 2007, 07:43:08 PM
I just use nero media player and it plays flacs/shns/apes ...etc
I also use nero to burn and I don't have to convert flacs...
Just drag and drop. I like to keep it simple.-t
no Nero on Mac ;)

i figure there's enough info out there on good Windoze apps for these purposes, so i'd make a bit of a repository for anything Mac related here. 

on Mac, you can accomplish the same using Toast 8, at least for FLACs.  not SHN, but i'm always hoping they'll add that someday. 
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: mattstick on August 12, 2007, 09:00:13 AM

I'm having problems with Cog being unstable.  I've had to un-install and re-install it a couple times because it will crash immediately after I open it.  Now it's doing it again.

Any tips here, I've repaired permissions, have lots of free space on the system drive...
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: rowjimmy on August 28, 2007, 01:25:12 PM
I was reading another message board and saw a thread about 24-bit FLAC playback on mac.
This was the final recommendation. YMMV
It does not, I'm told, play shn. but shn is for dinosaurs, anyway.

Edit to add the freakin link:
http://sbooth.org/Play/



oops
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: kickaha on January 31, 2008, 10:49:28 PM
VLC will also play FLAC:

  http://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html

And this post seems to indicate that it's possible, through a number of steps, to play flac in iTunes. I have yet to try this:

  http://earpick.wordpress.com/2007/06/11/how-to-play-flac-in-itunes-on-mac/

Two other compression utilities I use, besides xACT are Max and XLD:

  http://sbooth.org/Max/
  http://tmkk.hp.infoseek.co.jp/xld/index_e.html

Neither decodes shn but both let me encode from flac directly into apple lossless or aac for itunes/ipod usage.

Lukas
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: Caravan2001 on January 31, 2008, 11:13:18 PM
Well, I for one am stoked because I just figured out that Toast supports Flac.....I use cog to listen to my flacs, but when I needed to burna cd for a friend or the car or whatever, I always used xact to go to AIFF...for fun I dropped a bunch of flacs in toast, burned a disc  and lo and behold, it worked.....duhh...what a timesaver!
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: jephrey on February 01, 2008, 12:36:18 AM
Yeah, I've been using Toast for a while.  My only complaint is about the cue file.  It can't be dragged/dropped anywhere I think.  I had XLD, but I'll have to try that method again.  It's fairly easy to make a UI for an app like that.  Maybe even do some other things like completely tag the files.
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: Mr Minor on February 13, 2008, 09:47:56 PM
Thanks for the info on Cog.  Being able to play the shn/flac files is so much easier than converting, burning/storing shows. 

:clap:
:beers:
:banana:

By the way, the newest version didn't seem to make my Mac too happy, so I went with an older version and it works smoothly!
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: mattstick on February 13, 2008, 10:05:49 PM
Quote from: Mr Minor on February 13, 2008, 09:47:56 PM


By the way, the newest version didn't seem to make my Mac too happy, so I went with an older version and it works smoothly!

Mine used to crash if I had files in the queue which had been moved or deleted.  I would have to re-install, it was retarded.

The new version is rock solid though.
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: Mr Minor on February 13, 2008, 10:11:46 PM
Of course I spoke too soon.  As it was changing tracks, it would crash.   :frustrated:

Maybe i will try the update and see how it works.
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: Mr Minor on February 13, 2008, 10:15:22 PM
Quote from: Mr Minor on February 13, 2008, 10:11:46 PM
Of course I spoke too soon.  As it was changing tracks, it would crash.   :frustrated:

Maybe i will try the update and see how it works.

Alright, when I try and open the newest version, it tells me there are "no mountable file systems"

I am still running 10.3 and I think this is for 10.4

Aarrgghhh.
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: jephrey on February 13, 2008, 10:31:54 PM
Any reason to not update to leopard?  I think many softwares have dropped support for Tiger.

Stuart Copeland
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: Mr Minor on February 13, 2008, 10:51:57 PM
I am a poor teacher trying to buy a house.  Also waiting until summer so they can work out all the bugs.

I am using Cog version .4 and it is working great.  So far...prolly jinxed myself with thatnow...
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: tet on February 13, 2008, 11:48:46 PM
the educational price for Leopard is $70.  just go to store.apple.com and then to the Education section to purchase for that price.  it's a SOLID upgrade man, you'll be happy.
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: jephrey on February 13, 2008, 11:57:54 PM
Yeah, thinking about Tiger, I'm not sure it even had spotlight.  Not that I advocate stealing, but I'm sure you know there are ways to obtain a new OS without paying. 

In all honesty, for the last few releases, I've split it with my bro, so although I haven't bought myself a 100% legit copy, I've been involved with the purchase.  In any case, I've always found it easy to come up with a justification if I've needed one.  :wink:

Alec Ounsworth
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: Mr Minor on February 14, 2008, 12:52:44 PM
Quote from: tet on February 13, 2008, 11:48:46 PM
the educational price for Leopard is $70.  just go to store.apple.com and then to the Education section to purchase for that price.  it's a SOLID upgrade man, you'll be happy.

Good to know.  I will check that out.
Thanks for the info.  I love the fact that apple has those deals for educators.  I guess we teachers get paid in more ways than just the "big bucks."   :-P
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: tet on February 14, 2008, 12:59:38 PM
sure thing.  Apple and education go back a long way... it's always been one of their strongest markets, and is mutually beneficial for both. 
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: rowjimmy on June 11, 2008, 08:25:12 AM
(For all you mac guys) FLUKE supposedly plays FLAC in iTunes
http://earpick.cubicfruit.com/2008/05/15/fluke-play-flacs-in-itunes/


Obviously, I have no mac so I can't testify to its function...
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: whatapiper on February 14, 2009, 12:38:00 AM
thanks for the info, i've had my mac since election day and these links have helped tremendously.  hopefully i will one day know how to use my mac properly!
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: VDB on August 14, 2010, 02:42:22 PM
Having recently installed a nice, big fat new hard drive in my Mac, I'm now ready to devote more of my interest to lossless sources. (I know how you audiophiles feel about MP3...)

I did download Fluke, which enables you to play FLAC files right in iTunes, but this won't stream to my stereo system via Air Tunes. I believe you need a format iTunes/Quicktime understands natively in order to stream. So that means converting these files will become a necessity so I can listen on the real sound system. Not ideal but oh well.

So that made me wonder what the best file format to convert into is. Maybe it doesn't really make a difference (I doubt my ears would be able to pick up any) but I'd like to be able to think I'm converting into and listening to the consensus "best" lossless format.

Any preferences? Apple Lossless? AIFF? WAV?


Edit: I gather WAV is not a good option, since it downconverts to 16 bit. Yeah?

Edit 2: Unless of course the source is only encoded in 16 bit in the first place, such as this (still great-sounding) source (http://bt.etree.org/details.php?id=536512) I downloaded today.
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: newage on September 01, 2010, 02:08:09 AM
I use a program called airfoil to stream flac/shn from my mac to my airport express using play and cog. This has allowed me to stick with flac on the mac rather than going to alac. Really simple program that works well, although not free...

http://www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/mac/ (http://www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/mac/)
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: jephrey on September 01, 2010, 04:52:01 AM
WAV will work with all bitdepths.  I stopped using AIFF because WAV doesn't keep additional info in the file header or something like that and it's more "raw" or just the music. 

I'm sure I've said it many times, but I convert everything to apple lossless.  The only downside is re-tagging everything (and saving 2 separate copies in different formats, each in duplicate). 

Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: sls.stormyrider on September 12, 2010, 09:57:20 PM
came across shn for the 1st time today since I got my mac. VLC didn't work. Was able to convert with XLD.
Newest version of Cog working well (so far)

http://cogx.org/download.php (http://cogx.org/download.php)
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: VDB on September 13, 2010, 04:06:31 PM
Quote from: newage on September 01, 2010, 02:08:09 AM
I use a program called airfoil to stream flac/shn from my mac to my airport express using play and cog. This has allowed me to stick with flac on the mac rather than going to alac. Really simple program that works well, although not free...

http://www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/mac/ (http://www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/mac/)

Interesting. I like still playing everything in iTunes, one reason being the free Remote iPhone app that lets me control iTunes from anywhere in the house while Airtunes streams it to my system. I wonder if Airfoil, Fluke and Remote would all work nicely together.

One little catch is that I put shows on my iPod in the same ALAC format I use on the computer. So keeping and playing everything in FLAC on the computer would be only helpful if a) I could play FLAC files natively on the iPod or b) I could convert FLAC to an iPod-friendly format on the fly when synching the iPod.

I think the program Rockbox would accomplish option A; and I know iTunes will convert files when synching an iPod but I don't know if it would convert FLACs that you are playing right within iTunes with the help of Fluke.

This will only really be a big deal when I run out of HD space, which is not imminent.


Quote from: jephrey on September 01, 2010, 04:52:01 AM
I'm sure I've said it many times, but I convert everything to apple lossless.  The only downside is re-tagging everything (and saving 2 separate copies in different formats, each in duplicate). 

Yeah, that's what I'm doing currently. Except for, like you mention, the duplicate storage requirements, it's been fine for me. Even FLAC files that are tagged already when I download them (most aren't) keep their tags after I convert using XLD. And all the CDs I've been ripping have been going straight to ALAC, so no problem there.
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: Multibeast12 on October 05, 2010, 02:52:15 PM
Quote from: slslbs on September 12, 2010, 09:57:20 PM
came across shn for the 1st time today since I got my mac. VLC didn't work. Was able to convert with XLD.
Newest version of Cog working well (so far)

http://cogx.org/download.php (http://cogx.org/download.php)
THe new verison never shows the songs it is just a blank screen and it says the time down at the bottom. ANybody have any suggestions of how i can get this to work.
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: whatapiper on April 26, 2011, 12:00:48 AM
any advice on converting shn to flac without xAct?  I've been having issues with xAct lately, it's not recognizing any of my shn files.. I have tried reinstall with no success 
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: mattstick on April 26, 2011, 07:01:32 AM

Get XLD.
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: whatapiper on April 26, 2011, 04:56:22 PM
XLD works with leopard? I've installed but it does not run.  When I try to open the program nothing happens, same if I try to open files using XLD. I'll reinstall and see if that helps
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: whatapiper on April 27, 2011, 06:38:51 PM
After reinstalling twice I finally got XLD to work!

What's the drill with uploading a flac file to etree or here that used to be a shn file?  Save the md5s?
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: haleakalari on March 26, 2012, 10:50:47 PM
Quote from: mattstick on August 04, 2007, 11:26:08 AM

What do you guys use to edit the tags on the FLAC files?

i use jaikoz (http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/18360/jaikoz) for all my tagging purposes. works great with flac and a huge variety of other audio and video formats. jaikoz does cost a bit of cash though, so here are two free alternatives i've used in the past that definitely work with flac.

tag: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/21641/tag
musorg: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/23388/musorg

musorg works with flac, mp3, aac, ogg etc...
tag only works with flac, ogg, monkey's and wavpack.

both work great though. i just moved to jaikoz because i wanted something extremely comprehensive.
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: DoW on April 12, 2012, 09:15:59 PM
Quote from: whatapiper on April 27, 2011, 06:38:51 PM
What's the drill with uploading a flac file to etree or here that used to be a shn file?  Save the md5s?
:samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai:
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: rowjimmy on July 02, 2012, 04:29:36 PM
Quote from: DoW on April 12, 2012, 09:15:59 PM
Quote from: whatapiper on April 27, 2011, 06:38:51 PM
What's the drill with uploading a flac file to etree or here that used to be a shn file?  Save the md5s?
:samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai: :samurai:

Etree needs to get past that in some way...
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: mattstick on July 02, 2012, 05:31:34 PM
Quote from: haleakalari on March 26, 2012, 10:50:47 PM
Quote from: mattstick on August 04, 2007, 11:26:08 AM

What do you guys use to edit the tags on the FLAC files?

i use jaikoz (http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/18360/jaikoz) for all my tagging purposes. works great with flac and a huge variety of other audio and video formats. jaikoz does cost a bit of cash though, so here are two free alternatives i've used in the past that definitely work with flac.

tag: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/21641/tag
musorg: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/23388/musorg

musorg works with flac, mp3, aac, ogg etc...
tag only works with flac, ogg, monkey's and wavpack.

both work great though. i just moved to jaikoz because i wanted something extremely comprehensive.

I can't believe it only took 5 years to get that answer =)
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: happygirlbaby on August 16, 2012, 03:39:05 AM
The following will introduce a step by step guide on how to convert SHN to any other audio formats with the help of the powerful SHN Converter at http://www.bigasoft.com/articles/how-to-convert-shn-to-flac-mp3-wav.html (http://www.bigasoft.com/articles/how-to-convert-shn-to-flac-mp3-wav.html)

This guide applies to:

Directly convert SHN to FLAC, WAV, AIFF, Apple lossless ALAC and more lossless audio format
Directly convert SHN to MP3, WMA, AC3, MP2, OGG, AU, RA and etc lossy audio format
Straight convert all kinds of albums, concerts or shows in SHN to any other audio formats
Besides converting SHN, it also applies to convert more recent lossless audio codecs such as FLAC, Monkey's Audio (APE), TTA, and WavPack (WV) to MP3, WAV, WMA, M4A, AC3, OGG, FLAC, MP2, RA, AIFF, AU and etc.
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: PhishJY on August 16, 2012, 04:51:17 PM
Found an awesome app today: Enqueue.  Since iTunes won't play FLAC natively, I needed something else so I went to the App Store.  It's worth every cent of the $9.99 cost.  It's lightweight & simple to use.
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: mattstick on January 28, 2016, 06:56:47 PM

I've been running VOX to play FLACs last few days, it plays to airplay speakers which is nice.

They have an iOS app too but I haven't really bothered.
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: mattstick on January 28, 2016, 07:26:29 PM

And if El Capitain broke your SHN playback, this guy re-wrote Cog, included some new features and made it super light and awesome.

http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/cog-2016.1947801/page-2

Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: emay on January 28, 2016, 07:41:22 PM
Nice. Will have to check this out. I used to use songbird, but that has been discontiuned pretty much.
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: rowjimmy on January 28, 2016, 07:42:59 PM
Vox is great. I use it on the Mac and on my iPhone. I load music directly into Vox via iTunes and no longer need to bother with the iTunes library (which was failing under the volume of data).
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: mattstick on March 21, 2016, 09:38:20 AM
I used FLAC Player+ on my iPhone for a few days, then noticed that Vox was free on the App Store, so I grabbed it.

It's better than Flac Player+ , but I would like to be able to sort albums/shows by folder and not meta data...
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: jam> on March 21, 2016, 11:45:17 AM
I use Audirvana at on my macbook pro on my home stereo. It's great. Still using the old interface – version 1.5.1. They integrate it with iTunes, so you can play FLACs through iTunes basically – but I prefer to just drag and drop album folders since my metadata isn't all perfect and I like to keep my 16/44+ separate from my mp3s.
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: jephrey on September 15, 2017, 09:24:09 AM
Thought I was going to have to start a thread but this sticky is right at the top.

From macrumors, regarding phone7/appletv4k and later, looks like support is coming for flac playback. Just a small rumor now but hopefully it goes system-wide to iTunes and music.
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: tet on September 22, 2017, 12:41:16 PM
OK, some good news - I've been hounding the developer of Phonix, who took over Cog's source code about a year ago, and he FINALLY this week added SHN support!!  FLAC has always worked well, and it's a nice, low-resource player - check it out:  https://phonix.nl.eu.org 

The auto-update doesn't usually work, so just bookmark that site and check every so often, he's been updating a lot lately. 
Title: Re: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X
Post by: mattstick on December 28, 2017, 07:15:39 AM

Just noticed you can now use Preview to play FLAC in OSX High Sierra