[RESOLVED] First experience with FLAC files

My niece is new to computing. Her parents just bought her a Gateway notebook running XP HOME. She is far from being computer savvy but has managed to rip some of her favorite songs from her CD collection and was also able to buy some music from iTunes. She just bought herself an iPod Shuffle and has learned how to transfer her music to it.

She is also a major Pearl Jam fan. She told me that “they” are offering a 10-CD collection of live music for free download. However, it’s offered as a bit torrent file – which she admits is beyond her capabilities. Being my favorite niece (actually, my only niece) and since I have cable connection to the net, I offered to download the file for her, burn it to CDs and mail it to her (she is out of state).

I did manage to download the files (there are over 100 of them) last night (4 hours for a 5 Gig download) but discovered that they are all in “flac” format.

Now to my question (I know, finally):

Is there software available to convert these 100+ “flac” files to “wav” format?

Since this is not something I foresee doing again, so I’d like to stay away from paid software if that is at all possible.

Doing some research, I’ve seen reference to Nero being able to burn FLAC files to audio CDs. If this is true, then my problem is solved – I do have NERO 6.

Thanks in advance,

Terry

Here's some info on FLAC including links to freeware to burn it and a plugin for Nero as well. There is apparently also a winamp plugin available to listen to them as flac files.

http://www.toritraders.com/guides/flac.htm

http://flac.sourceforge.net/download.html

http://neroplugins.cd-rw.org/

Seems Nero has a plug-in here for flac [Free Lossless Audio Codec] files.

http://flac.sourceforge.net/download.html

Thanks, guys. I'll check your links tonight at home.

I usually recommend that FLAC's, like any compressed audio format, be decompressed back to .wav before burning, even if a plugin is available for the mastering software (virtually all mastering software can convert .mp3 on the fly, for example). That way, there's no concern about the conversion process, and if a file should fail decompression, it won't also ruin a CD.

Even though the burning system may be capable of on-the-fly conversion to .wav and simultaneous burning, I just don't ask that of my systems, especially if I don't know to what level they were compressed (level 8 is most common, but even high-powered systems can grunt a little if they were done at level 10).

dBpowerAMP excels at converting just about any audio format to just about any other, including .flac's to .wav's.

I do have dBpowerAMP (have used it for many years) but FLAC format is not one of the ones offered in the OPEN field. Is there a plug-in I should know about?

I spoke too soon ...

I nosed around and found the FLAC coded on dBpowerAMP's site, downloaded and installed it. Flawless!

Thanks again guys for all your help.

PS> If anyone is interested in the Pearl Jam bt file I'm talking about, here's where it is:

Go to http://www.theskyiscrape.com.
Under "P J News", follow the "More artwork for the Green Habit compilation" link.
Follow the link in "For information about and access to the compiliation, click here."
It's the "pj-ghcompilation1.1.torrent" file.

As I said, it took me about 4 hours to download.