[Pez]

And that in a nut shell is why I really dread having 2 libraries. Every disc or file I get would have to be ripped to AAC for portables and FLAC for the squeezebox. And to me that seems like the definition of pain in the ass.

[Tyson]

Sooo, what's the problem with converting your FLAC stuff to ALAC?

[jparkhur]

No more speakers, just headphones.  Wait till CDs are gone and we have to reimport to some other format....huh I love records

[Pez]

Sooo, what's the problem with converting your FLAC stuff to ALAC?

Depends on what you mean? Do you mean my current FLAC library which consists of not much or do you mean converting to ALAC just for iTunes?

[Tyson]

Convert everything to ALAC, and all future stuff to ALAC too, so you have a single library in iTunes.  What's the problem with that?

[Pez]

Hopefully nothing, but I have heard anecdotally that ALAC may not sound s good as FLAC, but again there are a lot of variables that coiuld contribute to that being the case. I'll run some listening tests tomorrow to see if I can detect any differences.

[Tyson]

I'd be very surprised if there was any difference in sound between ALAC and FLAC.

[Pez]

Ok, encoded Peter Gabriel Remaster of 'Your eyes' on both FLAC and ALAC. Listened for about 45 seconds in each mode and made a play list so I could go back and forth between the two and quite literally not know which was which.

The result: I detect no difference whatsoever, they sound identical in my setup to my highly picky ears. so Yay no double library necessary! Now I just need to get ripping!!!!

Thanks for all your help guyz.

[stereocilia]

I'm glad to hear that the Touch supports fast forwarding and rewinding for ALAC now.  Maybe it will work on the Classic and the Duet since the firmware and software updates?  I'm not going to go back and try, but I could not hear a difference between ALAC and FLAC, just as you found.  Happy ripping.

[Pez]

I'm not sure about the FF REW thing. I tried it via the squeezebox controller software on iPhone and iPad for flac, alac and wav. Neither seemed to work. Scrubbing works, if you just grab the progress point on the bar and run it wither way it will take the track to that point, which is what I prefer anyway, but I can't get FF/REW to do anything. 

[JEaton]

You really want to use lossless ALAC for your portable players? That's a lot of wasted storage and you'll get a lot less playback time out of a battery charge. Go with two libraries.

I find it pretty easy to keep my main library in Flac and then a parallel library in Mp3 just for my portable players. Disc space required for the Mp3 library is almost negligible - it takes up less than 1/4 the space of the main library. There's a lot of software available, including dbpoweramp, that can easily do the transcoding for you.

For what I use portable players (running, gym, commuting) I can't tell the difference between lossless and higher quality Mp3.

[JEaton]

Or maybe I misunderstood why you want to use iTunes and were considering two libraries. If it's only for computer playback and you want Squeezebox compatibility, just encode everything in ALAC.

[lcrim]

I'm not sure about the FF REW thing. I tried it via the squeezebox controller software on iPhone and iPad for flac, alac and wav. Neither seemed to work. Scrubbing works, if you just grab the progress point on the bar and run it wither way it will take the track to that point, which is what I prefer anyway, but I can't get FF/REW to do anything. 

This is exactly how I FF in a browser interface as the display on my Touches have been disabled via Soundcheck's TouchToolbar2.0 and I tend to use the browser interface for most things.
The remote does not allow FF on the Touch.  Earlier models  allowed holding down the next selection button but that no longer works for FF.
Larry

[HumanMedia]

so dbpoweramp is windows only.  Any good alternatives for mac?

XLD

Best Mac app for ripping and best for converting between lossless formats

[Pez]

You really want to use lossless ALAC for your portable players? That's a lot of wasted storage and you'll get a lot less playback time out of a battery charge. Go with two libraries.

This is one of the nice things about iTunes you can choose to have it automatically convert all hi-rez files to AAC for your portables on the fly while syncing so you never actually have the files on your computer! It takes quite a bit longer to sync, but I always sync over night anyway and it's worth it to not have 2 libraries.

[Pez]

Also, last night I had a major set back. Somehow my files that were supposed to be ripped to my external drive were being ripped to my regular HD. I noticed I had some extra iTunes folder on my HD and deleted it not realizing what had happened and erased about 30% of my progress.  I'm glad I didn't lose all of it, but I am having to re-rip everything that was lost.