pc to mac... how to make the transition?

[islandraider]

Planning to bravely wade into the mac world with a mac mini. Currently using a gateway laptop that has been with me since I discovered the wonderful world of file sharing & Trader's Den. I store music on an external hard drive & have been playing directly off the hard drive through Foobar2000, outputting from the PC via USB using a Nuforce uDAC into my older (but very nice) Rotel amp. I have browsed the FAQ... & it makes me nervous. I would really appreciate any insights from others that have been through this before! (so much great music & so much work to get to this point!) Specific questions/issues:

What player can I use to play flac and shn?
I have been using Azureus for my BitTorrent software, it looks like I can continue to use this program w/ the mac
I formatted my hard drive (about 500 GB music at this point). fat32. I think I will be ok with the mac mini here, but would love confirmation.
With whatever player I use, is there anything I need to pay attention to to make sure my tags stay intact (that was a ton of work the first time, don't want to repeat)
I noticed that apple/mac has a "lossless" file format. Should I consider converting the library or a copy of the library?
Anybody ever play around with the 'Toaster' software? A friend indicated that it would play flac? I don't know about shn.

Seriously, this has me very skiddish. I was amazed (& shocked) by the lack of players listed in the FAQ that will play flac & shn. I appreciate any insights/thoughts/ideas from the folks on this site.

Thank you!
Brian.

[U2Lynne]

See this item in the FAQ for software recommendations - Freeware Software Links. Look Inside If You're Stuck! (http://www.thetradersden.org/forums/faq.php?faq=new_faq_item#faq_software)

I use Cog and have for ages and it works great.

[islandraider]

Thanks for the reply. I saw that, too, but was concerned about the comment regarding corrupting the playlist with certain operating systems. Sounds like you haven't had problems. Which operating system do you have?

[co9ol]

I use Vox for all my Flac's. There are tons of players you just need to find them. I don't really play shn very often so I just use VLC when ever I have to.

Can't say I use playlists that often and I've never had one corrupted.

[lpmaskman]

I think stay at Windows PC, you have more abilities than Mac PCs.

[U2Lynne]

Thanks for the reply. I saw that, too, but was concerned about the comment regarding corrupting the playlist with certain operating systems. Sounds like you haven't had problems. Which operating system do you have?
I'm currently running 10.6.8. I don't usually save the playlists, so I can't really comment on that.

[islandraider]

I'm currently running 10.6.8. I don't usually save the playlists, so I can't really comment on that.

I think when I saw the word "playlist", I was thinking they were referring to library. I don't really use or save playlists, either, so maybe not a big deal.

It looks like Cog does play shn files, correct?

Also, I would be really interested in any comments about the Apple's Lossless file format (ALAC: Apple Lossless Audio Codec). It would be really great to play all my music in iTunes.

Thanks again for the info.

[co9ol]

Also, I would be really interested in any comments about the Apple's Lossless file format (ALAC: Apple Lossless Audio Codec). It would be really great to play all my music in iTunes.

Thanks again for the info.

I did a little test just to check it out
one song 4:20 in length
Flac: 28.8MB
Apple: 29.7MB
They seem to be about the same in file size, and SHOULD sound the same. If you really don't want to re-encode the files you might be able to use a program called Fluke that'll force itunes to import the files. You just can't do anything with them besides playback (it's not gapless last time I checked).

It's a shame iTunes doesn't support Flac natively.

[lintoni]

Aqualung (http://aqualung.factorial.hu/) is a music player that plays files (inc flac) without gaps and is available for mac users.

[islandraider]

Aqualung (http://aqualung.factorial.hu/) is a music player that plays files (inc flac) without gaps and is available for mac users.

Thanks for that. I would be very open to a quality player that will work on Mac. Mostly, I just want to be able to play all my music, gaplessly, losslessly, on ONE quality player when I make the switch over to Mac

BTW, do you know if the Aqualung will play .shn? I did not see it mentioned.

Also, spent a good portion of the day trying to find a 'windows' program to convert flac and shn to alac in advance of the mac mini arriving... not a great experience. xrecode II did a great job with the flacs (including keeping tags intact) but not the .shns. It would not transfer .shn data and the program seized up several times trying. This is going to be a bit of an adventure...

[jabulon]

Why don't you convert the SHN files to WAV and then to FLAC? I believe this is the right way to do so.

1) create a st5 of the SHN files
2) convert the SHN files to WAV
3) convert the WAV files to FLAC
4) create a ffp of the flacs.
5) check if the new ffp's are identical to the st5.

After checking you can delete the shn and wav files. You should keep the st5 so people know that these newly created flac files are identical to the original shn files.

[islandraider]

Why don't you convert the SHN files to WAV and then to FLAC? I believe this is the right way to do so.

1) create a st5 of the SHN files
2) convert the SHN files to WAV
3) convert the WAV files to FLAC
4) create a ffp of the flacs.
5) check if the new ffp's are identical to the st5.

After checking you can delete the shn and wav files. You should keep the st5 so people know that these newly created flac files are identical to the original shn files.

Hi Jabulon,
Thanks for the info. Can you provide a bit more detail... what program(s) would I use? Will tagging stay intact? Can I do this in batch or one show at a time? (I am learning as I go :))
Brian.

[jabulon]

Hi Jabulon,
Thanks for the info. Can you provide a bit more detail... what program(s) would I use? Will tagging stay intact? Can I do this in batch or one show at a time? (I am learning as I go :))
Brian.

Keep in mind that I'm on a windows machine so I can only tell you what windows programs I use. For steps 1 to 4 I use Trader's Little Helper. (TLH can convert SHN directly to FLAC in one step, so you don't really need step 2.)

I'm not 100% sure about tagging SHN files, but I always believed tagging is not available (possible) for SHN files. The SHN files I have (or had) aren't tagged in any way (they are just named track 1 etc). For tagging my FLAC's I use programs like Tag&Rename or CD-Tag. I'm sure there are similar programs for the Mac around.

[co9ol]

xACT Is pretty much the Mac version of The Traders Little Helper. As for tags I don't know, try converting one show and see what happens. xACT also has a function for tags tho I havn't used it.
XLD is another alternative if xACT doesn't work

[Karst]

xACT doesn't convert shn to FLAC I think.

I use Transmission for my torrents btw - found that one the most reliable.

[lintoni]

shn doesn't support tagging.

For shn to wav conversion, you could try looking here (http://www.hornig.net/shorten.html)

Not updated since 2001, so... caveat emptor.

You could always do it from the command line. Have a look here (http://etree.org/osx/#installation) for programs you need. It might seem scary at first,(no GUI!) but you'll soon get the hang of it.

[co9ol]

xACT does shn to Flac, just tried it.

[lintoni]

Also, as a player, VLC handles shnl.

[Igemo75]

"I use Transmission for my torrents btw - found that one the most reliable."

It's not, it messes with your ratio. Utorrent for Mac is MUCH better.

[daddyray]

I have found azureus (vuze) to be still sort of messy.

[lintoni]

I have found azureus (vuze) to be still sort of messy.

It was good years ago, bloated crap now. Whichever OS you use.