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How to play/convert FLAC files in iTunes

Published June 11, 2007 Computer Stuff

Some time ago I had acquired a collection of certain Beatles recordings in FLAC format (65 pounds of Beatles vinyls on my shelf keep me guilt-free), and since the only lossless format iPods would play was Apple Lossless, converting to that format was my only option. Now, while I support the great idea of open lossless that is FLAC, Apple has really been a bitch about implementing it into iTunes. There have been rumours support for it will be present when Leopard comes along, but I think we’ll more likely see native support for WMA files than FLAC.Before today, the method I used to use was: I would take the album in FLAC, put it through xACT which would convert it to .AIFF, effectively doubling the number of song files on my hard drive and getting rid of all the tags entirely; then importing those .aiff files into iTunes, tagging them by hand a little bit, converting the result to Apple Lossless, getting rid of the intermediate .aiff files, and then putting everything through iEatBrainz, the automatic tagging software which bases its algorithm on a checksum of the audiofile, and not the length of all tracks like iTunes does. Now, on their website, the creators of iEatBrainz failed to mention that it doesn’t fucking work most of the time, so I would end up tagging almost everything by hand.Today, I got seriously pissed off at not being able to instantly listen to A Hard Day’s Night, and instead of ripping the LP like I wanted to, I found a workaround for this. Here is what you do.

UPDATE: Good man Achim has put together all the necessary stuff to get through this tutorial into a single .DMG file. Saves you time, plus I don’t think Google’s servers will die any time soon.

What we’re gonna do is get iTunes to play FLAC files natively. That way, we can convert them right within iTunes to Apple Lossless for playback on iPods, preserving all the tags and bypassing the stupid .AIFFs.That is good. So, here we go.

UPDATE: I have created a little program which takes of all these steps for you. No more reading!

  1. Download the xiph.org component. Once you open up the .dmg file, there will be a bunch of copyright and readme files, as well as a file called XiphQT. Forget the readme crap, you’re reading this; this is better, cooler, and makes you smell nice. Okay, take the XiphQT file, and copy it into /Library/Quicktime/. Just to be safe, I copied mine into ~/Library/Components as well. (~ is your Home folder, so you gotta go to Finder, click on your home folder, go into Library, and then Components. /Library/QuickTime, on the other hand, is NOT in your home folder; you have to click on your hard drive in Finder or on the desktop to get to it)
  2. Now, download this thing: FLAC Importer. Once you unpack it, you’ll see a file called FLACImport.component with a LEGO icon. Do the same to it as to the XiphQT file, ie. copy it into /Library/QuickTime and ~/Library/Components.
  3. Lastly, download SetOggS. Once unpacked, take the Set OggS file and copy it to the desktop or somewhere convenient.
  4. You should reboot at this point.
  5. Once you’re done rebooting, find a .flac file you want to play, right/CTRL+click on it, go Open With>Other, and find QuickTime on the list there. If all is good, QuickTime will open up, and after hitting play/spacebar you should hear the sweet sounds of music. If you get an error instead, you screwed up, and should start from the beginning. Yes, from the VERY beginning. Where I yakked about how I wanted to listen to A Hard Day’s Night. That’s your punishment.
  6. At this point, QuickTime will play FLACs, but chances are iTunes won’t. Try it. Drag a .flac file onto the iTunes icon in the dock. If all iTunes does is show up onscreen cluessly like a half-awake student midway through the math class after partying heavily, then we’re not done.
  7. Remember that Set OggS file that you dragged onto your desktop, with an icon of a snake? Find your FLAC files, and drag them onto Set OggS’s application icon. It should not be running when you’re doing that - dragging your files onto the dock icon of Set OggS while it’s running isn’t gonna do anything. You have to quit it, and then drag the tracks onto the icon on your desktop or wherever you saved it.
  8. Once you do that, the program is going to start up and print out a bunch of stuff saying the operation was a success. Jolly good. Now take the same .flac files you just dragged onto Set OggS and drag them onto the iTunes icon in the dock again. Instead of doing nothing, iTunes should start importing and/or playing the tracks. Hooray! If you don’t use iPods, you could just listen to your FLAC files this way and be happy. However, FLAC files still display certain issues like problems with tags and artwork, and by converting to Apple Lossless those will go away.
  9. Double check that Apple Lossless is set as your importing format: go to the iTunes menu at the top, and choose Preferences (or hit Command+,), head to the Advanced tab, there click on the Importing tab, and make sure Import Using is set to Apple Lessless. Now you’re good to go.
  10. HIghlight all the FLAC files you just imported into iTunes within the Library, right-click on them and choose Convert to Apple Lossless. After a bit of crunching, iTunes will make an annoying chime letting you know that it’s all done. Select all the FLAC files holding Command on the keyboard (they’re all the odd ones) and trash them. Voila. You now have Apple Lossless files out of your FLACs.

Okay. So next time you want to convert your FLACs, just go through steps 7 to 10 and you should be good. It is somewhat semi-automatic due to the necessary step of running Set to OggS, but still beats the longass way I had to do it.Oh, and in step 9, you can set the encoder to MP3 or AAC instead of Apple Lossless. In the guide I kind of assumed that if you got FLAC files, you are probably an audio maniac like me and find the quality of MP3s atrocious.Enjoy.

236 Responses to “How to play/convert FLAC files in iTunes”

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  1. 1 David June 17, 2007 at 12:31 pm

    Thanks for publishing those top tips. I just by pure chance got sent a whole bunch of FLACs not knowing what to do. They are now on my iTunes library thanks to you.

  2. 2 64er June 17, 2007 at 2:04 pm

    Thank you very much! Clear, precise and amusing.

  3. 3 earpick June 17, 2007 at 6:42 pm

    Glad it helped you guys out!

  4. 4 Kertbert June 23, 2007 at 5:47 pm

    Is this a recipe for Mac users only? Seems clear until I try to put into practice in Windows.

  5. 5 earpick June 23, 2007 at 8:30 pm

    I’m fairly certain it is. I haven’t seen very many plugins for iTunes on Windows.

    You know, if you are a student a buy a Mac now, you can get a Nano for free ;D.

  6. 6 chavaloo June 25, 2007 at 2:57 am

    I’m running OS X 10.4.6 Tiger, and I don’t have the same library folders as you. Are you running a different version of OS X?

  7. 7 earpick June 25, 2007 at 3:58 am

    I am running 10.4.9 (still hasitating to upgrade over to 4.10) but it should not matter - the library folders have been the same since Jaguar (10.2) if not earlier.

    Which folders can’t you find? They should all be there.

  8. 8 chavaloo June 25, 2007 at 11:55 am

    I don’t have Library/Quicktime or Library/Components for some odd reason.

  9. 9 Shaz June 25, 2007 at 12:59 pm

    I realize that this is pretty much for Macs only, but do you know of a way I can convert .flac files to open them with iTunes on a PC?
    Cheers in advance.

  10. 10 earpick June 25, 2007 at 9:18 pm

    Library/Components may not be there indeed, I had to create that folder on my machine. I followed a number of help files for all the plugins you need to download, and one of them mentioned that the Xiph component has to reside under Library/components. I think they were just mistaken, but I created that folder on my machine anyway just to be on the safe side.
    The QuickTime folder, however, should be there. To double check, go into your finder, then go to the Go menu and choose Go to Folder. Then in the dialogue that pops up punch in “/library/quicktime”. It should get you to the folder. If it says Folder Not Found then something’s wrong - OS X can’t function without that folder, really.

    I think the problem is that you went to the home folder and looked under Library there, and not in the root folder of your Mac.

  11. 11 earpick June 25, 2007 at 9:25 pm

    As to FLAC on Windows, Winamp has a plugin available. And if you want to play the files in iTunes, there is a download available on the Xiph page:

    http://xiph.org/quicktime/download.html

    I have not tested it personally, but it seems to do the same thing it does on the Mac, ie. add playback capabilities to QuickTime on Windows. Since iTunes uses QuickTime for playback, it should theoretically work. Just installing Xiph on its own on the Mac side clearly isn’t enough, so I’m not sure if you have to do more to make it all work. When I was using Windows more, I would just convert FLACs to .wavs, then import them into iTunes, convert to Apple Lossless, and then tag the resultant files with Tag&Rename. The latter, unlike iEatBrainz, can be relied on for retrieving all the tags correctly.

  12. 12 Munyore July 1, 2007 at 3:53 pm

    thanks saved me lot of heartache can now listen to my lossless files on my ipod without having to delete my flac files

  13. 13 pacotheburro@gmail.com July 3, 2007 at 5:24 pm

    Your instructions were succinct, amusing and worked perfectly. Thank you, I adore you, you’ve saved me lots of time and made my ears very happy. Best wishes.

  14. 14 earpick July 3, 2007 at 5:45 pm

    Wow, looks like people found this post useful. Hooray! Mission accomplished. Have fun with your FLACs!

  15. 15 Sean July 22, 2007 at 1:25 am

    Thanks for the great help.

  16. 16 nick July 26, 2007 at 3:29 pm

    truly amazed and very appreciative of what you’ve done

  17. 17 Neil July 27, 2007 at 7:53 pm

    i’m not one for emotional gushing, but i’m teetering on the edge after such a life-enhancing post. cheers bloke

  18. 18 earpick July 27, 2007 at 8:05 pm

    Oh wow, the magnitude of replies. Thanks a lot everyone. Glad to help out.

  19. 19 Gib August 3, 2007 at 3:05 pm

    Thanks from Canada - how can I buy you a pint?! Any tips on converting .bup, .ifo, .vob over to quicktime and or itunes, cheers!

  20. 20 robin August 10, 2007 at 6:29 pm

    ahh this is fabulous!

  21. 21 earpick August 10, 2007 at 7:01 pm

    You can probably Xpress Post the pint over. And if you’re in Vankoover, then you can just drop it off.

    I do prefer wine though.

  22. 22 Tanya August 12, 2007 at 2:06 am

    I must be a little slow, but I got through steps 1 - 7 perfectly. The file played via Quicktime and everything. Then, I dropped the file onto SetOggS, which immediately gave me the message:

    Setting ‘OggS’ FSType on ‘/Users/Diane/TV/The Beatles - Revolver/The Beatles - Revolver - 02. Eleanor Rigby.flac’… done.

    I quit SetOggS and dragged the file onto the iTunes icon… And nothing! Do you think you could help a damsel in distress? Thanks in advance. :)

  23. 23 earpick August 12, 2007 at 2:56 am

    So far sounds like you did everything correctly. Try opening iTunes and dragging the file onto the “Library” item on the list on the left within iTunes. See if you get a dark edge around it. If you do, as soon as you drop the file it should get copied or added into the library, depending on how you have iTunes set up.

  24. 24 David Hall August 14, 2007 at 7:09 am

    Hi, Your explanation was easy to understand. I tried twice all the way through and all I got was a horrible droning sound on three different files I downloaded.I’ forwarding the link in case you have time to see if the files are bad, but others have apparently downloaded them with no difficulty.

    If you have any thoughts, I’d love to hear them. Ibelieve all of my software is up to date, my Powerbook G4 is about 5 years old, but has had good care, has plenty of gig space, about 20 left,and I’m running 10.4.10.

    Thanks, Dave

    http://www.archive.org/details/mmj2007-08-05.4023.flac24

  25. 25 earpick August 14, 2007 at 7:29 am

    Dave - tried your file. After dragging the Intro flac file onto SetOggS, and then onto iTunes, it played just fine. Odd. I wonder if one of the libraries doesn’t work as well on PowerPC? Hard to tell at this point. It’s obviously one of the components misbehaving. Make sure you have the latest components as well as QuickTime and iTunes.

  26. 26 RnO August 18, 2007 at 10:44 am

    Thx man, great explanation of how to do this.

  27. 27 Ran August 18, 2007 at 1:06 pm

    Thank you soooo much. One rare example of making an operation easily understandable, quickly and fun. Keep up with the good work.

  28. 28 Marco August 19, 2007 at 11:38 pm

    Or to make things really easy……….FOR MACS (at least)
    ….go to versiontracker & just download MacFlac…its freeware

    I keep mine in Apps……….you just drag your files in & it will decode ( gives a choice of AIFF or WAV…when decoded drag into itunes………..pretty sure also that you get to keep the FAC files aswell……….chose shared ?or itunes as output directory & it will double up the files…giving FLAC & AIFF

  29. 29 Marco August 19, 2007 at 11:39 pm

    I forgot …it will also ENCODE any to FLAC if you want

  30. 30 Marco August 19, 2007 at 11:48 pm

    & for the guy in Canada looking to open .vob .bup files
    Toast Titanium will open & burn them to a dvd or as a imagefile that you can then open directly on the computer w/out burning 1st

  31. 31 earpick August 20, 2007 at 2:07 am

    Marco - I used to decode the FLAC files myself. In fact that was the whole problem. When doing it the way I described you get to keep the tags and instantly convert to Apple Lossless or MP3 without needing to do double conversion, manual retagging or fiddling with files outside of iTunes. All you have to do once you go through the guide is drop the files onto SetOggS, and then drag them into iTunes. Voila.

  32. 32 Dwardo August 23, 2007 at 5:40 pm

    Great instructions, beautifully written - worked like a charm. If only everyone wrote step-by-steps like this!

  33. 33 earpick August 23, 2007 at 6:07 pm

    Thanks. I suppose I’ll try to write more of ‘em. Doing technical support teaches you to be more precise in your wording.

  34. 34 DFrav August 27, 2007 at 4:48 am

    Wow!! What a simple solution. Am I glad I came across this thread. I have been struggling with this for weeks. By your instructions, I was playing flac in my iPod in less than 5 min.

    Thanks,
    D~

  35. 35 Mark September 2, 2007 at 3:33 am

    Thanks for the guide / solution!

    I found that putting the components in /Library/Quicktime/ (and not /Library/Components/ or ~/anything) worked just fine. Also, I (am pretty sure I) didn’t have to restart - just quit and re-open QuickTime / iTunes. (This on an intel MBP.)

    Now the question is: How to have the (video) iPod auto-downsample, like the shuffle does?

  36. 36 earpick September 2, 2007 at 3:49 am

    I have been looking for an answer to that question myself. I will post if I figure it out.

  37. 37 earpick September 2, 2007 at 3:50 am

    And where on Kingsway are you? Not by Boundary by any chance? =)

  38. 38 Dominic September 3, 2007 at 2:03 pm

    Good work. I’d got as far as Step 1 myself, but then drawn a blank.
    I know how hard it is to write clear instructions - you’ve done a great job.
    Heartfelt thanks from Tokyo

  39. 39 earpick September 3, 2007 at 4:31 pm

    Thanks. That was actually pretty fun to write =)

  40. 40 Gordon September 4, 2007 at 2:19 am

    Works Great, except for the following: I tried two albums. On one the order of the songs is messed up, track numbers are gone. Clicking the Album column does nothing. On the other the artist and album info is gone, but the track order is right, they are still numbered. I tried getting CD track names under “Advanced”, but it says you have to import using iTunes. If I try to import under “File” it only lets me select one song at a time. Also, in the folder with the flacs there are lyrics and album covers. Is this of any use to iTunes? Should I just get them via an Itunes store account, which I don’t currently have? Is there another way? Lastly, when I select the whole folder, with lyrics, cue, covers, etc., and drag that to iTunes it makes two copies of the flacs. Not really a problem, just weird.

  41. 41 earpick September 4, 2007 at 7:12 am

    Sounds like the FLAC tag problems. Precisely why I suggested converting to Apple Lossless. AS is the iTunes native format it know well what to do with.

    As to the artwork, you can assign it manually or get an iTunes account (you’ll need to punch in a credit card number or you can get a gift card). Lyrics are trickier, and as of now I only know how to add those manually.

    Two copies of FLACs - sounds like you’re dragging the playlist files along with the FLACs, so iTunes goes “okay, here are some FLACs. Wait, a playlist, it could be A TOTALLY DIFFERENT ALBUM, I’ll import it too!”. Machines are dumb. Right now anyway. Don’t really care for when they get smart, I’ll be dead by then.

  42. 42 Ryan September 5, 2007 at 5:04 am

    Very excited to hear about natively playing FLAC in iTunes, but that’s the ONE step I can’t get to work! They all sound great through Quicktime, but as soon as I drag the files into iTunes (any icon, or the actual window itself) iTunes quits and I get an “iTunes has quit unexpectedly” message box. Any ideas as to what might be going on? I have iTunes 7.3.2…

  43. 43 wondergirl September 5, 2007 at 6:27 am

    Well, I have to say that I was quite tickled to find this handy dandy guide for the pain-in-the-arse FLAC v.iTunes issue! But then I scrolled down a little further and my joy turned to sadness, as I realized this is an instructional guide for all the cool kids with macs!!

    But I’ve bookmarked you anyway because my vaio laptop just took it’s 4th trip to the laptop doctor (laptomotrist?) and will, no doubt, need some ridiculous repair like say….oh, IT’S 3RD MOTHERBOARD REPLACEMENT (in it’s brief 2 year life!!) Damn Sony’s ihateyouihateyouihateyou!

    So pending the results of the diagnostics, I will be most likely on the market for my new notebook–which will be a macbook pro (I’ve already priced it with all the pretty little bells and whistles that I want–gimmie the biggest and fastest baby!). So, someday I’ll be like all the other hipsters! Someday, I’ll be cool too!

    p.s. we have that free nano deal here at IU too, but it seems a bit moot since they max capacity at 8gig, is it? How many lossless do you think we could fit on one of those bad boys? :P It’s bad enough that I can’t add an album to my 60gig ipod without taking something off to make room… and I don’t have a lossless lp on it! And now oink is slowly turning me into an audio snob…I was bad enough just being a music snob, but now I shall hate on your music and scoff at your bitrates!

  44. 44 earpick September 5, 2007 at 8:07 am

    Welcome, my friend, welcome to the machine.

    Teaser trailer - you will miss Windows eventually.

    :)

  45. 45 Ryan September 5, 2007 at 2:32 pm

    How weird is that that another B-Towner posted right after me? haha… anyway. Any ideas as to whats going on with the iTunes step?

  46. 46 wondergirl September 6, 2007 at 3:29 am

    Wow, Bloomington too, eh? Weird. Really weird. Where is this site’s home base anyway?

    Will I really miss windows…as in maybe I shouldn’t get a mac? Oh now I’m confused!

  47. 47 earpick September 6, 2007 at 5:40 am

    You’ll miss it for the certain charm in all the time you spend in fixing it. Macs seem almost too easy. I personally can’t use my computer if it doesn’t crap out every week, so I installed XP on my MacBook. Now I just get my share of blue screens and life is good.

    And the home base would be Vancouver CA.

  48. 48 wondergirl September 7, 2007 at 8:27 pm

    Haha! Well, I think I’ll be able to live without those “charming” blue screens! It will be a struggle, but I’ll get through it one stress-less day at a time…

  49. 49 wondergirl September 7, 2007 at 8:40 pm

    But in the meantime if you love figuring out all the windows kinks, how about figuring out how to convert flac to Apple Lossless?!

    …I’ll be your best friend!!

  50. 50 earpick September 7, 2007 at 8:43 pm

    Under Windows? I don’t know how to do it as easily as this guide explains.

    Basically, the way I did it on Win is I would use the FLAC converter tool available on the official FLAC website, batch-convert everything into WAV’s, import them into iTunes, convert to Apple Lossless within iTunes (Preferences>Advanced>Import> change the codec from MP3 to Apple Lossless if you haven’t already), and then use something like Tag & Replace, a utility for tagging music, to retrieve the tags for the album.

  51. 51 wondergirl September 7, 2007 at 9:07 pm

    Well that doesn’t sound hard at all. Is there a loss of quality when converting to wav–I suppose not if itunes can convert it back into apple lossless?

    And this is a completely rookie question, but I just asked this on oink too, what is “tagging”? Is that just the “info” for the songs (artist/album/track names)? Or something more technical?

  52. 52 earpick September 7, 2007 at 9:37 pm

    There is no loss of quality because WAV is a lossless format, and so is FLAC, and so is Apple Lossless.

    And yep, you got it. Tags are metadata within each song that contains artist, song, year and other information, so when you play the song the player, iTunes, Winamp or whatever you prefer, will tell you what song is playing. Otherwise, all you would see is the filename which isn’t of much help.

    If you use iTunes, right click on a song and choose Get Info. That’s where you edit the tags.

  53. 53 Mark September 8, 2007 at 2:31 pm

    Worked like a charm! Thanks for figuring it all out, so I didn’t have to!

  54. 54 Garey September 10, 2007 at 3:20 pm

    Thank you so very much for the demystification. I was able to search my entire drive for .flac files and from the found set, drag it to “Set OggS” icon. In one fell swoop the library was iTunes enabled. Then from that same found set, I was able to drag the flacs to a new playlist in iTunes. I was able to complete the conversion process of multiple files in multiple directories in less than 2 mins …and then after waiting for iTunes to catch up, push play!
    Thanks again
    Now I can FLAC-out my entire CD library.

  55. 55 steve September 16, 2007 at 10:11 am

    It works like a charm, thanks. However, after conversion to aiff there is a significant reduction in volume, ie play the imported flac file then the converted aiff file with the same volume settings and the flac file is much louder. Any idea why and what to do to avoid it?

  56. 56 Kim September 16, 2007 at 3:43 pm

    Works like a charm. Great tutorial! Too bad it doesn’t work with airport express! Suppose that it doesn’t support .flac.

  57. 57 dmcormond September 18, 2007 at 6:32 pm

    This worked perfectly for me, thanks!

  58. 58 maxLOVER September 18, 2007 at 10:57 pm

    cool workaround but a bit too long.

    why not just use “Max” from sbooth?:
    http://sbooth.org/Max/

    workaround would be: drag your flac onto max, choose apple lossless as output and let max automatically put the converted files into itunes. that’s no more than two clicks for me! and btw: no problem with lost tags this way…

  59. 59 earpick September 18, 2007 at 11:05 pm

    Haven’t heard of Max, hmm. For what I do that indeed might be the best way to go. Not sure about people who want to keep their library in .flac format.

  60. 60 Spherehead September 19, 2007 at 6:52 am

    This is the only program one should ever need to convert just about any audio format to any other:

    http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm

  61. 61 earpick September 19, 2007 at 6:53 am

    Assuming you’re running an ugly Windows box of course =).

  62. 62 Scoot Dog September 25, 2007 at 12:26 am

    Damn you are Good!

    :)

  63. 63 Randy W September 28, 2007 at 4:22 pm

    Thanks greatly, worked like a champ!

  64. 64 Bundy September 29, 2007 at 5:19 pm

    Very useful walkthrough, worked for me! Thanks a lot!

  65. 65 earpick September 29, 2007 at 5:22 pm

    Glad it worked for ya guys!

  66. 66 Kristian October 3, 2007 at 9:35 pm

    Hi,
    I have a problem. Everything works as described but when I´m finally playing the converted flacs I wont hear anything. I´m running mac os 10.4 on a intel macbook. Did I miss something?

  67. 67 earpick October 3, 2007 at 10:34 pm

    Are the speakers on? =)

    Ok, I’ll assume they are. Then, do you know for Sure that your FLAC files are ok? Do they play in QuickTime? Otherwise make sure you have all the latest system updates. Not sure if it’ll help but you never know. There have been a few fresh QT updates lately.

  68. 68 treyshaf October 5, 2007 at 2:28 am

    KUDOS to you for providing clear and simple instructions to follow. You have brought pleasure to my ears without frustrating me beyond belief before hand!
    THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!

  69. 69 Chris October 5, 2007 at 7:01 pm

    Why not use Media Monkey instead. It plays flac files and converts to mp3 or whatever on-the-fly to your ipod.

  70. 70 earpick October 5, 2007 at 7:07 pm

    Thanks for the comments! Preciate it.

    As to Media Monkey, the whole point of the guide is to import the songs without any conversion, or do so into the Apple Lossless format if you want to play it on your iPod

  71. 71 Steve Irwin October 8, 2007 at 4:27 am

    Brilliant! I didn’t even know I hated mp3 until I got these new flac files running today.

  72. 72 Alan Soon October 8, 2007 at 10:45 pm

    Thanks man! It works!!

  73. 73 Paul October 9, 2007 at 1:15 am

    Works great, thanks!

    BTW, rebooting when you install software is a Windows thing, an artifact of Windows’ poor design - not necessary on a UNIX machine like the Macintosh.

  74. 74 earpick October 9, 2007 at 6:14 am

    Actually the component you install in the guide is for QuickTime which is a separate layer of the operating system just like Aqua, Carbon, Java and the rest. To reinitialize it you need to reboot the machine.

  75. 75 sarasotajoe October 23, 2007 at 2:14 am

    My components folder in OS 10.4.10 is in ~/Library/Audio/Plugins/Components

    If you just look in ~Library/ you won’t find it.

  76. 76 nick October 23, 2007 at 1:09 pm

    and again this has done the job :)

  77. 77 Phil October 25, 2007 at 2:06 pm

    Top work mate :) massive kudos!

  78. 78 Pete October 26, 2007 at 2:09 pm

    Hi, I’ve done all that you said and read most of the back and forth to try to resolve the issues I’ve had thus far. First, I too, don’t seem to have a quicktime directory in library…anywhere. I am able to open the .flac file and it appears to be playing, but get no sound, either from QT player or iTunes. Any thoughts?

  79. 79 andrew October 29, 2007 at 11:20 pm

    You don’t need to have a Quicktime folder pre-existing in your Library. The system just looks for the folder when it’s loading components; there’s no difference between an empty folder there and no folder at all. SO, when you install the components, if there isn’t a folder there already, just make one. This is true for all shit that you have to install in your Library Folder.

  80. 80 dekelly November 2, 2007 at 2:54 pm

    You are the bomb. Thank you so much for taking the time to share this. I didn’t know where to start. And it did make me smell nice!

  81. 81 Vincent November 9, 2007 at 6:24 pm

    Thanks! It worked flawlessly.

  82. 82 earpick November 9, 2007 at 6:25 pm

    Thanks for the feedback guys. Have fun FLACcing

  83. 83 haynz November 11, 2007 at 3:37 am

    very cool…thanx!

  84. 84 Gui Pita November 19, 2007 at 1:11 am

    Thanks for writing and publishing this! Worked perfectly. :-)

  85. 85 JP November 20, 2007 at 9:25 pm

    I am running Leopard and I am trying to do step 1 but there is no components folder or quicktime folders in the library. Is this from Leopard or my doing?

  86. 86 earpick November 20, 2007 at 10:07 pm

    I would imagine it would be the same for Leopard as it is for Tiger. But to be honest I’m not sure - I still haven’t switched over as a number of apps I use aren’t Leopaready.

  87. 87 Davo November 24, 2007 at 4:45 am

    So, has anyone actually got the quicktime plug-in to work with Itunes on Windows?

    There is hope!

  88. 88 Boomee November 25, 2007 at 10:38 am

    Thanks! WOrked like a charm as everyone now knows. But… I can’t play the songs through my remote speakers after importing. Any ideas why this process disables that feature? Thanks again.

  89. 89 earpick November 25, 2007 at 10:49 am

    This is a known issue. AirPort doens’t support FLAC. But there is a utility by Rogue Ameoba called AirFoil (http://www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/) that will do the trick. It costs moneys though.

  90. 90 Davo November 27, 2007 at 1:36 am

    Cause I can’t make it work. Guessing got to do with FLAC and SetOgg .dmg files.

    Help!

  91. 91 William G November 28, 2007 at 1:40 am

    i got Van the Man flac files to play finally.
    thank you very much!
    WG

  92. 92 Gareth G November 28, 2007 at 7:36 am

    Great tips! Worked like a charm, I’d been looking for a way to deal with this FOREVER!
    Thanks!
    GG

  93. 93 JL December 2, 2007 at 9:05 am

    I simply dragged the FLAC files into a TOAST window for creating an audio cd. 2) saved as a disc image. 3) Then mounted the disc image from within toast. You will then see an audio CD icon mount on your desktop) Then open Itunes and it should automatically recognize the CD and could then import to whatever music format i wanted to!

    Hope this helps or offers an alternate option for people who already have toast.

    JL

    PS: Since Toast is for PC and MAC Im sure it should work similarly for PC users.

  94. 94 Frantz December 3, 2007 at 2:07 pm

    Thanks a lot, great tips…
    I still have a little problem : I’ve got a lot FLAC of albums with only one FLAC file and a CUE sheet…
    Is there a way to import CUE sheets into iTunes without splitting into tracks first ?

  95. 95 earpick December 3, 2007 at 6:19 pm

    I’m afraid there is no way to import the CUE sheets and keep the song as a single file. I was looking for a solution like that myself, perhaps involving track bookmarks of some sort or something.

    Thankfully, iTunes now has the skipless playback so you can safely split the file into multiple songs using something like CUE splitter, or, like JL explained above, convert the flac file into a disc image, mount it and import using iTunes.

  96. 96 Indii December 3, 2007 at 9:55 pm

    Yup, no reboot required, but quit iTunes/Quicktime after installing the components if it doesn’t work for ya.

  97. 97 Frantz December 4, 2007 at 2:31 pm

    Thanks for your answer but it’s not working. CUE Splitter do not handle FLAC files and Toast only take CUE sheets when it’s associated with a BIN file, and if you input the FLAC file, you’ll have a one track audio cd.

    So is there another Mac solution than convert every FLAC to AIFF (or WAV) and manually edit each CUE file ?

  98. 98 earpick December 4, 2007 at 11:45 pm

    I think you’re doing it wrong. Don’t just mount the FLAC file - create a new audio CD and drag the flac+cue into it, then create a disc image instead of burning the disc. Mount THAT and see if iTunes shows you more than 1 track =).

  99. 99 Frantz December 5, 2007 at 11:34 am

    Thanks again for your answer.
    Toast Titanium v8.0.3 do not handle cue sheets for audio cd.
    When I create a new audio cd and drag the flac and the cue file into it, I got an error window telling me that this kind of file is not supported and that the .cue file has been skipped…

  100. 100 Frantz December 5, 2007 at 11:38 am

    I switched Toast language to English to take a window shot :
    [img]http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/7563/image2xl4.png[/img]

  101. 101 James G December 12, 2007 at 2:23 am

    Thank you for your GREAT instructions. It worked perfectly. I thought I was screwed when I realized I accidentally ordered FLAC as a format option when I purchased the music online.

    J

  102. 102 Davo December 13, 2007 at 11:16 am

    Anyone made it work in Windows itunes?

    D

  103. 103 powerpc December 17, 2007 at 1:10 am

    works on Leopard OS X 10.5.1 with iTunes 7.5 (19).
    If you can’t find ~/Library/Components just create the directory.
    thanks to earpick for the tutorial!!!

  104. 104 earpick December 17, 2007 at 1:12 am

    ‘er we go. Perfect. Thanks!

    I’m still on Tiger, some of the apps I use are scared of the new cat.

  105. 105 sean December 17, 2007 at 12:13 pm

    You are tres cool. Thanks.

    I ignored the Components folder instruction and everything works fine. Cheers!

  106. 106 sean December 17, 2007 at 12:15 pm

    Frantz!

    Use XLD, it opens Cue files and their corresponding flacs whether it’s one joined flac file or multiple. It’s also free.

    If you prefer paying try Fission by Rogue Amoeba it does the same thing but with a shitload of options and is very pretty!

  107. 107 Brian December 19, 2007 at 7:32 pm

    Thanks for these tips! The process worked perfectly.

    iTunes had to chug a bit on my G4 to get the FLACs going though - just a warning that if you see the beachball after you add the files to iTunes, don’t panic!

    Some additional comments (a previous poster made these points as well):

    - I only had to place the components in my root folder (i.e., Hard Drive: /Library/Quicktime/ )

    - Restarting quicktime is sufficient.

    Running an iBook 1.42GHz PowerPC G4, OS 10.4.8, 1.5 GB RAM

    I’m off to do the same thing to my G5.

    Cheers!

  108. 108 nilsel December 27, 2007 at 11:16 pm

    Thank you very much for this great how-to! Works perfectly on 10.4.11 PPC (server), with latest quicktime (7.3.1) & iTunes (7.5(19)).

  109. 109 David S. December 28, 2007 at 1:32 am

    Thanks, worked awesome-ly.

  110. 110 marty402000 December 28, 2007 at 5:45 pm

    I tried the process 3 times and cant get it to work. Im running a Mac Book Pro 2.33 17″ with leopard. Any help would be apreciated!

  111. 111 Sergejs December 29, 2007 at 10:47 pm

    Thank you very much for the tutorial, it works like a charm in Leopard.

  112. 112 wtfmoose64 December 30, 2007 at 12:52 am

    Thanks man! good stuff, and pleasantly presented!

  113. 113 earpick December 30, 2007 at 12:54 am

    Very welcome people. Glad this is of use. Clearly everyone’s got tons of FLACs lying around, all legal too :P

  114. 114 Todd December 31, 2007 at 10:47 pm

    Wow… this worked… made my day. Happy New Year.

  115. 115 jose January 1, 2008 at 5:00 am

    tah for that — works great.

    as a refugee from oink, i just need somewhere to download some more flacs from!

  116. 116 Leftoff January 5, 2008 at 12:49 am

    very nice, intuitive instruction like the mac itself. Thank you…and flac indeed sounds twice as good as mp3…what’s the tech reasoning behind this, as I’m new to the format.

  117. 117 earpick January 5, 2008 at 1:20 am

    The twice as good thing is debatable, but the basic difference is that audio in FLAC format (or Apple Lossless) is kept.. well.. lossless (Free Lossless Audio Codec). Meaning, it sounds exactly like the CD or original media it was ripped from. Unlike an MP3 which uses audible [to some freaks like me] audio compression to bring the filesize down.

  118. 118 Solo500 January 5, 2008 at 9:58 am

    Thanks. I will chime in with the others and say that your instructions were concise, effective and amusing to boot.

  119. 119 earpick January 5, 2008 at 9:59 am

    Thanks! Now get ‘em Flacs playin

  120. 120 markpith January 7, 2008 at 7:57 am

    Thanks, worked perfectly on my 10.5.1 machine.

  121. 121 V January 7, 2008 at 11:49 pm

    Most excellent. Wasted an hour trying to figure this out before coming across your how-to. Great work man! If only all my problems could be solved this easily by someone else…

  122. 122 Armand January 8, 2008 at 3:27 pm

    Use VLC is much easier then this solution

    http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html

  123. 123 earpick January 8, 2008 at 5:34 pm

    Errr.. Yeah, sure. As long as you don’t want an iPod, don’t care about what an app looks like, don’t edit tags, and generally don’t do things that people who listen to music do.

  124. 124 saktiitkas January 9, 2008 at 7:00 pm

    when i drag flacs onto set oggs the dialogue says failed for all files. what am i doing wrong?

  125. 125 earpick January 9, 2008 at 7:55 pm

    No idea. Tried different flacs?

  126. 126 Lofidelity January 10, 2008 at 3:24 am

    Thank you, I smell nicer now.

  127. 127 B January 10, 2008 at 4:13 pm

    Go check out MAX!
    http://sbooth.org/Max/

    I created FLAC and OGG VORBIS files of imported Blossom Dearie French vinyls back in the day that I thought iPods would eventually play. Needless to say, Apple wants to keep that bizarre reliance on AAC… so no FLAC.

    MAX converted all the FLAC files in a batch without a blink.

    Plus I outputted the files to the superior (to iTunes) LAME VBR MP3s in the same breath for my iPhone where space is critical.

    And because it’s opensource it’s FREEEEEEE!

  128. 128 earpick January 10, 2008 at 5:08 pm

    LAME is still an MP3 codec which is lossy. The point of FLAC and Apple Lossless is to keep the quality of the file identical to that from a CD or whatever original source the audio came from.

    Also, LAME vs. AAC is a debate I won’t go into =). To my ears AAC sounds better. Purely on paper, it’s a more efficient codec as well, closer to OGG than it is to MP3.

  129. 129 JeffK January 13, 2008 at 2:59 am

    How do you import the FLAC’s using itunes so you can get the cd track names from bootlegs you download?

  130. 130 JeffK January 13, 2008 at 3:52 am

    I don’t mean cd tracks I mean the song titles. When I click in itunes to retrieve the song titles it states you must import using itunes

  131. 131 earpick January 13, 2008 at 4:38 pm

    Oh those… You just might have to type em out.

  132. 132 stang January 14, 2008 at 5:57 am

    Hey, really appreciate your guide as it has allowed many people to listen to superior sound.
    However, I ran into a problem and would be grateful if you could shed some light.
    Everything has been working very smoothly for about a day or two and just today all my flac files have started to play without sound.
    I added new flac files and since then my flac audio have no sound in itunes and QT.
    How should i go about fixing this up?
    Thanks

  133. 133 some guy named jim January 16, 2008 at 1:43 am

    so if you want to listen to FLAC on your ipod you should use rockbox.

  134. 134 earpick January 16, 2008 at 1:56 am

    Assuming your iPod isn’t a Classic, a 3rd gen nano, a shuffle or a Touch that is.

    And if you don’t want to mess with firmware flushing, stick to converting to Apple Lossless. Besides it has no problems storing tags and accepts artwork unlike the FLACs. And who doesn’t like to play with CoverFlow!

  135. 135 daveJoyce January 18, 2008 at 3:27 pm

    Hi man wonderful, Even I could follow your brilliantly easy instructions. Thanks very much.

  136. 136 briguy January 24, 2008 at 12:55 am

    Hi . . . I followed your instructions and all has worked fine on my powermac. Just couple of simple questions, after importing the flacs into i-tunes it lists it as a “quicktime movie” file? All other info like song name, artist, album, genre were there except for the track numbers (though in the original flac the files are labeled with the track number included). Could some flacs be tagged without the track #’s? Lastly, for kicks I converted in tunes the same songs to AAC and it kept all the information - this is normal yeah?

    brian

  137. 137 earpick January 24, 2008 at 1:04 am

    1 - yes, looks like the FLACs just weren’t tagged with a track number. It’s up to whom you get FLACs from. You can get them fully tagged or, more often, incompletely or even completely untagged.

    2 - Normal for it to keep all the info, yes. That’s actually the whole point of doing it this way - if you want to convert to any other format but FLAC you get to keep all the existing tags. Otherwise, with most conversion tools which convert to WAV or AIFF you loose the tags.

  138. 138 Zarilion January 24, 2008 at 4:51 am

    Thank you soo much! Amusing and great guide!

  139. 139 Usoppi January 24, 2008 at 6:52 am

    Hi, I add some explanations to this workaround for newbies. Earpick’s way is made of two ideas. That’s very popular among people that manage movie files on iTunes (indeed). So if you understand why this workaroud works like a charm, you can manage more files on iTunes.

    Idea One, adding QuickTime Component to play files by QuickTime. -> Step 1,2,4-6
    Idea Two, set filetype to what iTunes can accept. -> Step 3,7-8

    In this case, you add QT components to import & play FLAC files on QickTime (XiphQT and FLAC import), and set filetype “OggS” by Set OggS.

    Adding components to play many kinds of files is very clear and understandable idea, but why you have to “set filetype”? It is because iTunes uses Carbon API, it means iTunes know what file to accept by filetype (this is very Classic way…now iTunes know suffix as well). So if you change filetype that iTunes can accept and you have right QT components installed, iTunes can add your files and play like mp3 or AAC.

    You can do the same trick if you have movies that iTunes can’t play like DivX. If you have .divx file (from Stage6 or somewhere), you should install Perian (QT components for many movie codecs: freeware) and set filetype to “MooV”(QuickTime Movie), you can add DivX movies to iTunes and play it.

    So, for Step 3,7-8 (Set OggS), you can choose other applications that can change filetype like;
    FileBuddy (shareware)
    iLikeYouMore (freeware)
    and so on.

    Hope this explanation helps someone ;-)

  140. 140 earpick January 24, 2008 at 7:12 am

    Great explanation. And while I’m the type of guy who always needs to know why and how something works as opposed to just how to do it, a year of working at an Apple store taught me that most people just don’t wanna know. Which is pretty sad because it’s soooo fascinating (ok, maybe 2-3 ‘o’s less fascinating than that).
    But hey, life’s a bitch and then you die. So I didn’t bother. Thanks for explaining it to other nerds like us =).

  141. 141 Ray January 26, 2008 at 3:29 am

    Hi, many thanks for this idea; it worked perfectly. One problem: I took my converted .flac files and put them into playlists, but when I try to burn those playlists I get an error message that reads “There are no items to burn in this playlist. Add items to the playlist before burning. Check the checkboxes next to the items you wish to burn.” This is weird because there ARE files in the playlist, and they are checked. When I click on them I can listen to them, so I don’t know why iTunes won’t burn them. Any ideas?

    And thanks again for the suggestion.

  142. 142 earpick January 26, 2008 at 3:33 am

    I have a pretty good guess why, and the explanation lies in Usoppi’s comment - iTunes basically treats FLACs as movie clips without video. Hence they’re not really ’songs’ to iTunes at all. The solution would be to convert to Apple Lossless or MP3 or something. I convert everything to AL anyhow but that’s just me cause I have an iPod and am generally an Apple whore.

  143. 143 Ray January 26, 2008 at 2:17 pm

    Hi Earpick;

    Thanks for the tip; I’ll give it a shot. And thanks again for this idea!

  144. 144 Ray January 26, 2008 at 3:39 pm

    Hi Earpick,

    Thanks for the suggestion. I converted my files to Apple lossless with no luck, and then MP3 with no luck. I get the same error message. Have you tried to burn these files at all? Any luck? Thanks…

  145. 145 earpick January 26, 2008 at 6:06 pm

    I have to burn them yes. Once they’re Apple Lossless files they should burn fine. Hmmmm…

  146. 146 eric January 30, 2008 at 10:46 pm

    Thanks for this! It worked like a charm.

  147. 147 Faraz January 31, 2008 at 11:36 pm

    Great stuff!

  148. 148 David February 2, 2008 at 1:30 pm

    Thank Very Much for this excellent “how to” works just like a bought one!! You Rock and so does itunes now..

  149. 149 earpick February 2, 2008 at 5:53 pm

    What do you mean, like a bought one? People are chargi