How to FLAC and with iTunes

Right ... so in follow-up to my last post about audio compression (please read the comments as well as the main blog), here follows the easiest method of fisting FLAC files right up into your iTunes music collection. iTunes officially doesn't support the format, but will play them back with no problem. Hmmm. Collusion!

Adding FLAC files to your iTunes music collection:

If you use OSX 10.4 and up:

1) Goto http://cubicfruit.com/fluke/ and click "Download Fluke" 2) Make sure iTunes is not running, install FLUKE, then restart iTunes

3) Highlight the FLAC files in the Finder, CTRL+CLICK (or right click) with your mouse and select "Open With..." then select 'Fluke' ... it will ask "Do you want to add these files to iTunes?" ... hit YES.

4) Goto iTunes ... the FLAC files are now smugly sitting in your music collection, cheekily flipping off Apple. And waiting to be played I might add.

Creating FLAC files from AIF / WAV files: (my tried & tested method, there are definitely better ways to do this)

1) Goto http://flac.sourceforge.net/download.html and download "xACT with installer & GUI".2) Install into the Applications folder & on the Dock (you will use this often, trust me). Run.

3) With xACT running, select the Encode tab, then Add the files you wish to convert.

4) Make sure the FLAC Compression button is selected and choose a mid-range setting (scale is 0-8 .... I use setting 4 for no reason apart from it's in the middle)

5) Click the Encode button and choose a destination folder.

6) Go back to my previous instructions and check the files open in iTunes.

My album is 54 minutes / 15 tracks of stereo audio:

628MB in AIF / WAV format

582MB in AIF / WAV inside a compressed ZIP file

385MB as a collection of FLAC files

ZIP compression of a FLAC folder will not reduce the file size. How efficient is that?!

If you use Windows XP go to to a Mac shop and get one. Or just Google "FLAC" ... dozens of options exist out there. Note there are still many more options for OSX just that I know Mac users tend to prefer iTunes over any other media player so wrote these instructions with that in mind.

Go forth & educate! The dominion of quality audio is at hand!