Hi everybody, I just got (again) a crush for music, in the off season (for us living in this part of the country now is the start of a long off season and as such we need to engage into hobbies.) I like to listen to music when am home doing chores or just sitting and enjoying to some good recordings, be it old rock or jazz, 80s disco or classic, whatever fits. What you can do is convert your FLAC to Apple Lossless. You can use iTunes to rip your CD directly to Apple Lossless. All the uncompressed formats CD, FLAC and Apple lossless sound identical because they are bit for bit the same. Once your files are in Apple Lossless you can use any Mac software or IOS device or iPod to play the files. Apple's Core Audio handles the lossless format so all Mac audio software can access that format Because all these formats are lossless you can convert between them any number of times with no loss in sound quality.
I use Apple Lossless for 600 or so CDs that I ripped, and I stuck with iTunes to manage it. This is the easy option because you just set iTunes to import into Lossless format and start ripping. But the thing I like most about this setup is I can get iTunes to automatically convert lossless to 256 m4a when pushing to my iPods, iPad or iPhone. So I can keep lossless in my main library for use on the MBP (which I use with an external DAC), but still have great quality mobile use too, and I only have to keep a single lossless copy of each track.
While you can import music in formats like MP3, MP4, FLAC, WMA and others, you can even choose to manage your music libraries using the player’s support for Microsoft SQL server and MySQL. FLAC playback is possible on mobile devices or phones based on Windows Mobile, or Symbian OS with either S60, Series 80 or Series 90 UI platforms, can run the free open source media player application OggPlay.
I am using VOX on a MacBookAir which is not the one where I have my iTunes library and when comparing the same music in MP3 and in FLAC I can say there is a difference, it depends on the music and its quality, I can discern the difference with good recordings and music whit a good soundstage, of course it's not always that I want to sit on the sofa and enjoy good recordings so it's not worth the pain converting it all in lossless but I can say there is a difference. I am not happy to have to dedicate a laptop as a music server, maybe in future will either get a Mini or adapt my old one for the purpose. Thank you all for participating to this thread with your opinions and suggestions Giovanni. Ok, back on this discussion, I got another MacMini from 2006 who which the owner changed the HD for a 250GB SSD and who also added ad upgrade to Lion (damn, I can't make it work to install Lion on the other Mini I upgraded both CPU and EFI!!!) and a DVI to HDMI cable that works like a charm, I connected it to the TV, switched on and as magics the screen lit up and it all runs without any setting required, magics of the OS I guess.
Problem now is that VOX which I was using on a recent MBAir won't work on 10.7 so evaluating to convert all the FLAC to Apple LossLess to have then iTunes to handle it all which would be much more convenient but am wondering if I would then get the same quality sound out of the AAC rather than the FLAC. VOX player is the best, I tried all the FLAC players for Mac in this list, which is the top result when I search 'Best FLAC Player on Mac', but I like VOX the most.
I’m ripping all my CDs in FLAC format and uploading them to my VOX library. It’s so simple. Now, with a little help from an Apple compatible DAC, I listen to music in all of its glory. Don’t let anyone tell you that there’s no difference; there is a big sound quality difference. Vox instantly syncs what I upload from my PC to my iPhone; the app even has an excellent parametric equalizer that helps me adjust my music to the listening environment.