Topic: SHN/FLAC playback on Mac OS X

[whatapiper]

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!

[VDB]

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 I downloaded today.

[newage]

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/

[jephrey]

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). 

[sls.stormyrider]

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

[VDB]

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/

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.

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.

[Multibeast12]

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

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.

[whatapiper]

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 

[mattstick]

Get XLD.

[whatapiper]

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

[whatapiper]

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?

[haleakalari]

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.

[DoW]

What's the drill with uploading a flac file to etree or here that used to be a shn file?  Save the md5s?

[rowjimmy]

What's the drill with uploading a flac file to etree or here that used to be a shn file?  Save the md5s?

Etree needs to get past that in some way...

[mattstick]

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 =)