Music Sync and auto-convert (FLAC to Ogg)
Ever encountered the hassle of archiving music in one format but needing it in another for your portable music enjoyment? I have and spent this afternoon sussing out the most sensible way to do it (under Windows anyway). Read on you, like me, faff with things like FLAC but need something a little more robust for on the road…
I’ve recently tidied up my music collection and got the tags right and started re-ripping my real-world CDs to FLAC. I like FLAC because it’s an open format and it’s lossless (meaning it retains the same full audio quality of the CD in a slightly compressed format) but it’s a touch on the chunky side.
For portability I have my Sansa Fuze that serves me extremely well but I’ll run out of space sharpish with FLAC files so Ogg, another open audio format, comes into play. Ogg is lossy (meaning audio data is cropped to significantly shrink the files but in way human ears don’t notice too much) so I can fit oodles of it on my Fuze. Problem is the faff of converting the FLAC albums to Ogg then copy them over. It’s a little laborious.
I started to hunt around for some tools that might do the trick. First stop: Songbird. Sadly no file conversion options on the go here. Next up DB Poweramp, a Windows audio ripping and conversion package. No luck here either as I have to convert to Ogg then create the destination folder on the Fuze (repeat for each album… ZZzzz….). Media Monkey has the facility but in the free version.. argh!
With great surprise my salvation comes in the form of an audio player / library that I shunned years ago: Winamp.
Winamp on a BIG monitor works well but gets very cramped very quickly on medium to small screens. That aside it does support copying to portable devices while trans-coding to the format of your choice all within the free version. The level of configuration you can dive into for your portable device is impressive. Permitted formats, by file extension, can be specified with anything that doesn’t match being converted automatically to the format of your choice.
Converting to Ogg isn’t supported out of the box however a happy Winamp plugin adds this and you’re good to go! I’d go into more details but hardly anyone actually reads SpaceCookies at the moment so leave a comment if you’re interested to know more.
Yes yes I know things like iTunes are much simpler and easier to use but if, like me, you’re one of the minority that demand full control over the quality of their music and aren’t scared off by a little tinkering it’s a great solution.