Filed under:
Audio,
Software,
iTunes

Since switching to the Mac full-time last year, my only remaining complaint has been the abysmal (and finicky)
FLAC support in iTunes. FLAC, or Free Lossless Audio Codec, is an open source lossless compression format that offers a nice compromise betweeen storing the uncompressed music file — which is very big — and converting the file to a lossy format like Ṃ or AAC. Apple has its own lossless format,
Apple Lossless, and Apple Lossless is great — but I′ve lots and lots of live performances archived in FLAC and have not wanted to spend the time
converting all those files so that I’ve the ability to play eachthing in iTunes. About 6 months ago, I pretty much gave up and started just ripping CDs in Apple Lossless and using
Max to convert favorite albums or performances.

Reader Mitchell wrote in and told us about
Fluke, which aims to be an easier way to play FLAC files in iTunes. I’ve used other
XiphQT based solutions, but none have worked as well as Fluke. Install Fluke and then open up a FLAC file with it (or drag your FLAC files to the icon) and it automatically runs a script that tricks iTunes into adding a FLAC file to the library. For the most part, tagging and even album art will be converted — though I did have to add track numbers to some of the files I tested. It isn’t as seamless as an actual FLAC player, like
Cog, but it is certainly more hassle-free than some of the other script-based solutions I have used in the past.

Fluke is free and available for download
here.

Thanks Mitchell!

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