Ever since I wrote the post about listening to FLACs in iTunes I had received quite a few responses indicating public’s general interest in the topic. And while I tried to keep the instructions simple, it was still not quite… Mac-like (damn you Jobs, how spoilt hath we become).
So, to celebrate my weblog being moved to a dedicated host, and after two sleepless nights, I humbly present to you Fluke, a Mac approach to listening to FLACs. Download, install and use. No moving files around, dragging libraries or following stupid instructions by someone who thinks he’s funny.
I’ve written out a pretty clear how-to on Fluke’s main page, but to sum it all up, all you really have to do is download and install the thing, and open your FLACs with it. Or just drag them onto Fluke’s icon.
Let me know how you like it, and make sure to leave a comment if it acts up. Not too complicated a program to act up but it is my first effort.
hi
it seems i can’t make it work:
i select the flac files, open them with fluke and it also asks me if i want to import those files to itunes, i say OK but nothing seems to happen frome there, nothing is imported or anything… what i’m i doing wrong?
thank you
Are you selecting the FLAC’s themselves or the folder they’re in? Try importing just a single FLAC file. Also, when you press OK, do you see a window flash on the screen?
Oh and, once you press OK - does Fluke quit itself eventually or stays in the dock?
Oh by the way. Don’t forget to restart iTunes =)
hmm, didn’t work for me either. I right clicked an individual song, picked fluke and clicked yes, no love. I tried both with iTunes running and not running. When iTunes wasn’t running, it did launch after your script finished but no new file in my library.I’m running 10.5.2 and iTunes 7.6.2 on a Mac Pro. The only thing I can think of that might be unusual about my config is that my user folder is on a different drive that is symlinked to the user folder of the drive the OS is on. But when I looked for any newly created files I’m not finding it either.
Ok I’m pretty sure I know why this is happening. Will post a fix soon.
Alright. Pretty sure I fixed it now.
Hi, this worked great!
I can even use iTunes “convert” functionality to convert it into mp3 or whatever.
The only beauty spot is that the flac files have to be opened with OggS the first time…
(I’m running 10.4 on this machine, will try it on a 10.5 later)
Sweeet! Looks like that did it. I’ll keep adding functionality as it goes, and this version should be fine for now for all you FLAC addicts.
Unfortunately iTunes crashes quite often, but I think it’s because of the XiphQT plugin…
Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0×0001)
Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS (0×0001) at 0×07e51000
Thread 0 Crashed:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0×901311e0 memcmp + 64
1 org.xiph.xiph-qt.xiphqt 0×07c07890 FindPage + 144
etc…
Hmmmm. That I have not seen reported at all before, even with the old manual instructions. Doesn’t appear to be my script’s fault. What version of 10.4 are you running? The usual suggestion to repair permissions applies =)
Worked perfect for me - excellent job!
I recently bought a Macbook Pro, and have said goodbye to PC. I have a large collection of FLAC (in-fact 90% of my music collection is in FLAC) that has slowly built up over the XP years, so it has been a both a exciting and frustrating transition from the PC / FLAC comfort zone of Winamp & foobar2000 to the hotwired Apple iTunes. I’ve tried other players (Cog, Play) but they just dont do it for me… so thank you.
I was wondering: when I import a FLAC file from my Western Digital passport, Fluke seems to make a copy of the file in my iTunes library. So there is no way to just import the FLACs from my passport? Fluke must make a new altered copy in the itunes library in order for it to play?
I don’t really know a lot about this stuff so if I’m totally off the mark please be gentle =)
Again…thank you.
90% FLAC.. Impressive!
Now, it’s not Fluke’s fault. It’s iTunes. Go into your iTunes>preferences>advanced and check the General tab - I’m willing to bet $20 (imaginary internet dollars of course) you have “Copy Files to iTunes music folder when adding to library” checked off. That means iTunes will always make a copy of everything you feed into it and put it in its music folder (Home/Music/iTunes/iTunes Library by default).
The suggestion is reasonable however - i will add this to the To do list for the next version to let the users pick whether they want to copy the file to the music folder or not. Thanks!
Oh by the way, if you have your entire music on the WD already, and if you just want to keep it there, you might as well move the iTunes library folder to your external drive. While still on the General tab under Advanced in preferences, press the Change button at the top, and point iTunes to the folder with music on your WD. The only drawback of doing it this way is that you have to keep your external Western Digital connected whenever you want to listen to music, so if that’s not what you want, let iTunes copy your FLACs into its library folder like it does right now so you have your music with you on the go.
Hope that helps.
No problems — it all installed and worked great, just wanted to say thanks!
Cheers,
Chris
Awesome! That’s good
Tried, it works but if I use “add to library” feature, the flac are not added.
While if I douyble click on them and use Fluck it asks me to add them toi iTunes and after are in iTunes Library indeed.
That is correct. Since it’s not a native format to iTunes, it does not like it when you choose the Add to Library feature. That’s why I built the functionality into Fluke so that it bypasses that step and kind of ‘force adds’ the tunes. The other way to do it is to drag your FLACs onto the Library item in the left column of the iTunes window.
I’ve installed FLUKE and it seems to go through the steps of converting and adding my FLAC files. The iTunes “processing” window even comes up after opening the files with FLUKE, but the files still do not show up in iTunes. I’m running an intel imac with 10.4.11 and iTunes 7.6.
If you got the processing window the files must be getting added. So my guess is that you just don’t see them cause they’re not tagged. Check your Recently Added playlist to see if anything hasn’t been added for sure.
I rebooted and the program works beautifully now. Thank you. Most of the files I’m uploading seem to be fairly well tagged, except for the track numbers, which means they all end up being out of order. I’ve been running albums through tag to try and fix it, but that hasn’t worked. Do you know of any programs that will add track numbers that iTunes will recognize? I’m uploading over a hundred FLAC albums, so it would be great to not have to individual number each track. Thanks again, great program.
Hmm.. I’ve downloaded a few FLACs off Archive.org and manually added the track number tags into them using xACT. Upon importing into iTunes it didn’t recognize them, so it appears that it’s a limitation of one of the components Fluke uses.. I’ll see what I can do though, might need to do a bit of automation.
One more thing, the flac files I’ve added aren’t being recognized on my network over iTunes sharing. Dunno why that would be, but . . .
Same reason - because it’s not an iTunes native format. If you want to do that, plus listen to your tunes using an Airport Express, I suggest you convert the flacs to Apple Lossless. Either from within iTunes or using something like Max (http://sbooth.org/Max/)
Works well here - shame that track numbers seem to be lost on import but no biggy.
One issue I had was with not being able to add artwork like you can with mp3 id3 tags… solved it by using iTunes get artwork command which i stores it somewhere else i think and not in the flac itself!?
Yep. iTunes stores the artwork in your iTunes Library(typically ~/Music)/Album Artwork
I downloaded the program, and all it does is that it just shows up as a .dmg file on my desktop. I use a PC, is that why Fluke is being shown as a simple .dmg file that i can’t open up on my computer?
Yes. This is Mac only. Sorry
This works just great! Thanks for an excellent program!
Would you be willing to contact me for an article on Fluke? I can’t give too much information about it but if you email me at ryan (at) machive.com I would really appreciate it.
~Ryan
Hi,
Thanks for this!
I’ve tried and tried again, but the same mistake appears! Fluke starts, I get the box with the script, and then when itunes start, it automatically stops! Is there any way to fix this?
What exactly do you mean by iTunes automatically stopping? Do the tracks get added to the library?
FLUKE works great on my MacBook for regular FLAC files.
However, I do have lots of High Resolution (94/24) files, and when I “FLUKED” them - they were downconverted 4608kbs to 727kbs. Is it possible to convert 96/24 FLAC files to 96/24 PCM/WAV (or any other 96/24 format. playable in iTunes) files without loss i quality?
Hmm. That’s a good question. Sounds like a limitation of FLACImporter to me (one of the components Fluke uses). I’ll take a look into it.
I tried downloading and the disk won’t mount at all
— just thought i’d let you know.
Was looking for a way to play in iTunes, on my brand new Mac, the songs I had FLAC-encoded on my PC. Your app works for the one file I have tried playing back for now, so thanks.
Can’t believe you just got 35 comments on this
, thanks for your effort.
-Nicolas
Heh. Thanks! Glad it works for you all. I have a few new features to implement, and do tell me if you have suggestions for features or improvements in mind.
Thanks for this! Found your blog through a google search after ignorantly buying .flac files on my mac.
Thanks for the easy fix!
You, sir, have a winner here! Thank you so much for putting this together!
Now my only issue is storing duplicate mp3s for ipod. When’s your FLAC in iPod update coming?
Thank you! Works great!
I did download one double-album and the guy put it all into two .FLAC files instead of 15 files, one for each song. I was able to convert the two files to iTunes but they are treated as two songs. I tried converting them to ‘AAC’ but that wouldn’t allow me to break the files apart into the individual songs. Do you know of a way to do this? I’m (obviously) not very computer savvy, so, if this is way out of my league or you just don’t want to waste your time with this, I’ll totally understand.
Either way, thank you thank you thank you for this very simple solution to listening to a lot of songs I couldn’t find on anything but .FLAC!!
Hi… can’t download.. keeps saying that the server is not available?
Dan
Works great, thanks for this great little app.
It doesn’t work very well for me, it doesn’t seem to support unicode so I just get stuff like ‘????’ for all the artist, album, etc tags.
I have a weird issue… After successful import to iTunes, it starts playing with 1/5 of the speed, it’s like someone switched the speed on a reel to reel deck to lower mode.
Any ideas?
@N - I’ll look into it. Have not tested with Unicode tags.
@D - Yeah. Your FLACs are at a sample and bitrate other than 44.1KHz/16-bit aren’t they.
Incredible work! Thank you very much. I’n got around 400-450 albums in FLAC and finally I can load them into iTunes.
A few limitations I came across:
-Can’t share these across the network (unfixable I guess)
-Didn’t try but I guess this doesn’t work with airtunes (use Airfoil)
-Mass ID3 editting does not work (selecting multiple files and changing ID3 doesn’t work) (this should be fixable?).
-iPod’s no go (unfixable unless someone hacks the iPod firmware)
Barth:
to keep files lossless, playing on airport express and your iPod convert files in iTunes to Apple Lossless. To do that right-click on the file (or control-click) and choose “Convert Selection to Apple Lossless”.
limitation points 1, 4 and possibly 2 fixed by a girl…
@last post:
To get the Apple Lossless selection you need to go to iTunes Preferences first. Select Advanced - Importing - “Import Using:” Apple Lossless Encoder
Yes, they are 24/96. Any chance to support it in near future?
Not really up to me at this point - the limitation is inherent in one of the modules Fluke’s using. I shall contact the dev’s of those and see what I can do
these files don’t play through airport express (computer only) which renders this solution useless for me at the office.
Nice work.
I have my entire album collection (4000+) (albums!) in FLAC and would hate to have to convert everything.
Installed perfectly and ran/runs standard res files without hiccups.
This is a real neat, helpful thingy.
Ran this and it worked.. now my iTunes is verrrrryyy sslloooww.. little rainbowwheels aplenty when I plug in my iPod touch.. any link? Or have I just done something else stupid to it? It’s possible, I guess.. Either way my iTunes 7.6.2 is utterly flac’d..
Awesome! I’ll have to get used to seeing four-digit bitrates =P.
yep. I’m having a lot of the same difficulties previously described. iTunes crashes often. Sometimes it looks like the process happened just fine, usually iTunes crashes when I try to do it, and after several attempts I only actually added files once and they still do not play: cannot locate original; and when I locate the original it still will not play because it’s a .flac file. It’s not happening.
Sorry for my english, I’m French.
Really a good idea ! But, it doesn’t work… at all.
I can’t install it. When I click the package, it doesn’t open. Nothing happens.
I run Mac OS X 10.3.9.
Anders, I’ll see if I can try to investigate into the problem, and Gus — you need at least 10.4 to run Fluke.
This works really well
Just two frustrations:
- there seems to be a gap between the FLACS when playing back, which I can’t get rid of.
- won’t sync to ipod because ipod doesn’t like FLACS
Any workarounds for these?
Thanks.
Barnaby
Hey earpick!
Great work man. I had to restart iTunes after trying the first import and had to reimport again, but it wasn’t a big deal.
Barnaby: the workaround for your iPod is to either run Linux on that puppy (see Google on how to do this) or to transcode your FLAC to mp4 or mp3 or some other iTunes-happy format.
Converting to Apple Lossless is the only workaround for that at the moment.
Looking forward to Fluke APE coming out…. ha~~~~
TO ALL PC USERS!!!!
the way to make it work is to download a dmg2iso program
(takes 2 minutes to find on google) and install that the program should work fine
(if not im sorry for your PC not working right lol)
LOVE THE PROGRAM HOST
Should it work with multichannel FLACs like these:
http://www.2l.no/hires/index.html
When I try (5.1 FLAC 24bit/96kHz) I get chopping, distortion, and random noise on my MacBook Pro (10.5.3). If I connect via toslink to my surround receiver, then the receiver says the toslink is streaming stereo and I hear the same bad sound.
Can I just safely assume that I have less than a snowball’s chance in Hell playing back 5.1 FLACs on my Mac?
(btw, gtsnowracer: That is just SO wrong - grow up, kid)
Sorry, I can manually add photos to non .flac files, just had to restart iTunes. Anyway to add artwork to .flac files (without the using iTunes store)?
Works great!
Would be nice if there was some kind of GUI so you could start the app and drag stuff onto it instead of having to drag them onto the icon though. Otherwise awesome!
Gracias! Now I can playback my files!
Regards.
What I wonder is why this is even an issue anymore? If iTunes was half the player it claims to be Apple would add native support. It really can hurt them.
Just another example of how its not “Think Different” it’s “Think Our Way”
Sorry for the rant. Just crazy how there are great apps to *make* FLAC on Macs but can’t play them on it’s supposed premiere player.
Hi! Thanks so much, this works great.
Hey thanks, this kinda works. However, the flac files in iTunes are slowed down. That is the playback is slowed down and the pitch is therefore way down, everything sound like the devil speaking!
Pretty weird, I only have one album to try it on at the moment, but the files play correctly in Cog.
Take a look: http://krulli.com/vid/Fluke_weird.mov (9mb but my server is slow as hell)
Thanks this is the best thing ever! I’ve been trying to find how to convert FLAC to APL for 6 months and I’ve finally found it!
Thanks so so so much! <3
Hey there!
I just can´t make it work. I do all the process and after click YES in the “You really want to import this…” advise. A new advice is showed with this legend:
Can´t get ((class appf)) “itunes.app” of ((class cfol)) “Applications” of ((class sdsk)) of application “finder”.
Any help?
Thanks.
One other issue that I have not seen listed - the EQ seems not to have any affect upon the imported FLACs.
Works well with single files.
Is there a way to import a complete folder (just dragging a folder to fluke and not having to select all files within the folder)?
Thanks!
– Christian
Hi Earpick - thanks for all the work done here. I’ve been following since the DIY way…
Just one request - Is it possible to create a nice icon for the flac files, once they are opened up with Fluke.app.
Hopefully its not so complicated!
Cheers.
Zohar
Thank goodness I found you!
This is a little bit of amazing code, my friend.
Just wish the track numbers would import as well. But, whatever. Good is good ’nuff!
Thank you!
thanx for an exelent program!
Hi - First, thanks so much!!! It was working so well then… after updating my iTunes app (7.7) I find that Fluke is no longer working, even though I got the latest version and (re)installed it. The files don’t open up in iTunes anymore and nothing happens when I import them. Am I doing something wrong? Is the current Fluke incompatible with current iTunes? If so, will there be a fix. If not, any suggestions to get it going again? Thanks again for an elegant and very helpful tool. be well, Mitch
Thanks for the app. It worked beautifully.
Heya -
Installed and added FLAC files to iTunes, but iTunes repeatedly crashes when I play any of the files.
I’ve tried repairing iTunes permissions as you mention above, using Disk Utility, but it doesn’t help.
OSX 10.41.11, iTunes 7.6.2.
Don’t know if you can help, but hope so!
Cheers.
My apologies - looks like it was just the one dodgy tune. Shall get onto the supplier… Cheers, James.
Nice wrapper; thanks.
I was so pumped when I saw this but unfortunately there is a HUGE (and I mean huge) quality loss when using FLUKE.
Huh. FLAC stands for Free LOSSLESS audio compression.
just tried Fluke out. works like a charm.
thought you should know that the first album I’ve used it with was The Fat Of The Land.
Yeah, that is an important detail =)
This is probably a stupid question, but I was wondering if to uninstall Fluke, we just need to uninstall the Quicktime components that were installed (in addition to dragging what is installed in my Application folder to the Trash)?
You got it, Ian
Excellent, excellent excellent.
Previously used your tutorial but this makes it that much easier!
Fantastic job mate.
Great little utility! Thanks!
The only issue that I am having is setting fluke as the default app for all FLAC files. Has anyone else had this issue?
I just dont want to have to always select “Open With…” everytime I get a FLAC.
That is indeed an issue. One of the first ones that are getting resolved once I get my hands on it.
First off, Fluke really works well.
I am having trouble with some FLAC files not taking album artwork. The option in iTunes is greyed out. Any ideas?
So Fluke works for me….and no disrespect…BUT I just found a MUCH better way of dealing with FLACs.
Download the free application X Lossless Decoder (XLD) and you can just drag your FLAC’s onto XLD’s icon…and it will quickly convert the file to ALAC (Apple Lossless Codec) so you can play it on your iPod or iPhone as well as your computer!
It also supports cover art!
http://tmkk.hp.infoseek.co.jp/xld/index_e.html
Great app! Once the troubles with making fluke the default app for flac and track numbers are displayed, this will be the best mac flac solution there is
Many Thanks for Fluke.
I like the name too!
Hi,
Fluke worked fabulously the first time I tried it… so my initial feelings were: fabulous what a groovy dude! And they still are.
Sadly tho’, the next two attempts at the process lead to this dialogue box:
Swet OggS:
Setting ‘OggS’ FSType on ‘/Users/sebpalmer/Desktop/Downloads/ TODAY!/Royal Dan/Track01.flac’… done.
… then it worked ok on the fourth attempt, but on the fifth I got the OggS message again… Que pasa?
Seb
This is a completely awesome utility earpick. Thanks a million. It is an awesome world we live in, isn’t it?
Thanks to you and the authors of the libraries that Fluke is using.
Peace.
Oki, so — setOggS showing up is normal. Just wait a bit, it will disappear.
As far as letting Fluke be set as a default app - a new version is coming up soon, and so is an updated website :). It will come as no surprise when I say I’m having time availability issues, but I have a good excuse - a new camera =).
thanks! you made my day!!!
Hi Dmitry,
I love you man! You’re one of the reasons modern technology can be such a blissful and liberating force for good, and - as you generously five credit where due - props to the guys whose code Fluke rests upon. I love the Fluke logo/icon btw, very nice! Listening to .flac files of Steely Dan out-takes from the Royal Scan album sessions, thanks to you, and I have a pretty big archive of other .flac goodies lined up to be enjoyed later… thanks again,
regards from the shore of olde Albion,
Seb
I tried dragging individual FLAC files on top of the icon, as you suggested - and something seemed to happen, but I’m not sure what.
I can’t figure out, if it actually translated the file, where did it put them - I can’t seem to find them in my iTunes library, but then again it didn’t ask me where the iT library was. So far I can’t find them on a system search.
any suggestions? thanks for your time and effort on this - it’s a very necessary app!
will
Thanks again for the responses peoples.
Now, Will — Fluke should swallow in your Flacs and add them to iTunes automatically. Have you checked the “Recently Added” playlist?
Bravo earpick.
Worked like a charm. Thanks a lot!!
Hey earpick
Thanks a lot for doing all of this work- it seems that you have a lot of questions on your hands but I have one too so thanks again.
I’m using iTunes version 7.4.2 (4) and whenever I drag my flac files onto the Fluke icon in bulk (like an entire album, only the .flac files not the txt files or anything) and everything works up until the point when the files are supposed to appear in iTunes. The iTunes icon will replace the Fluke icon in my browser icon at the top of the screen but the music doesn’t show up in recently added. When I try dragging the flac files individually to the Fluke icon the “process not found” box appears.
Do you have any idea what I’m doing wrong? I’ve tried restarting the computer and iTunes and still no dice.
Thanks for your time
Billy
FLuke seemed like a great idea, and I’m sure it works just fine provided the FLACs are standard 44.1KHz/16-bit files. Unfortunately, all my FLACs are high-res, so a test with Fluke resulted in distorted playback. It’s a great shame, since your approach seems like the ideal solution for FLAC/iTunes.
With regard to uninstalling — I’ve located the FLACImport and XiphQT components and have trashed these, but where do I find SetOggs?
Curious as to why my flac imported tunes only play on the laptop speakers and not via the Airport Express into the monster stereo?
Any suggestions?
thanks,
Nick
If you could make this work on iTunes for Windows, I promise to click the Donate button and follow through. This would be *so* excellent for those of us use Windows to load our iPods.
Oops…. got it…. converting to Applelossless
Thanks for your effort in this project - it worked great for me, the files now play in iTunes:)
There´s a couple of strange things happening though:
I placed the original folder in: -music/iTunes/iTunes_music, and after having batch converted with the Apple Lossless encoder I get a new folder with a different title than the original. This one also placed within the iTunes music folder.
The song names are correct but not the folder name. Could it be because the “Keep iTunes music folder organized” is checked?
The “copy files…when adding…” is left unchecked.
And all the converted tracks still have the .flac extension in Finder, and “MediaInfo Mac” says they are flac files - codec used: flac,
the iTunes player says quicktime videos…
EDIT:
I just tried the “advanced/convert the selection to Apple Lossless” and now they are all fine.
But why did iTunes play them when they were still “called” .flac files??
iTunes: 7.7.1 (11)
OS X: 10.4.11
Hello
Sometimes it works, sometimes not so much.
I receive a “process not found” error from Fluke 0.11 every I dropped multiple flacs on the Fluke icon, and receive the same error about 50% of the time when I run a single flac file.
I have re-installed fluke and restarted iTunes a few times now. Fluke must not like my system or my flac files.
I will check out Fluke again after the next update.
OSX 10.4.11 itunes 7.7
How do I avoid getting duplicate song tracks in the iTunes library?
When converting I always get an extra folder in the Itunes music folder, and the converted tracks are still in flac format. They play in iTunes alright, but I always have to select them from the library in the player and choose ” convert to apple Lossless”, thus creating duplicate tracks.
Is there a way to bypass this so I dont have to delete all the flacs inside the player?