FLAC's in iTunes

I've been using iTunes less and less because of it's limited support for the audio file formats i use. But I've been listening to the Connect360 media server from the mac pro and like it, but since i am only adding new stuff in the FLAC lossless format this posed a constraint with iTunes.

Open source innovation to the rescue via Fluke (play flacs in iTunes). I downloaded 0.25b (for beta) and installed. The FLAC extension is now associated by default with Fluke. We go to //Gamera and select You Really Got Me by the 13th Floor Elevators. You could ctrl click and select open with, fluke as well (or right click if you have a 2 button mouse, a useful thing Steve!)

Once you select the file it open iTunes and imports the file. No problem but that was just a little 3 min song. Let's leave iTunes open and try importing the entire Psychedelic Sounds album. Not so good. You can shift click all the tunes but when you ctrl click and choose open there is no Fluke option. So we select Open With, Other and browse to the Applications folder and click on Fluke. Now we tick the Always Open With checkbox and click Open. A dialog box called Adding Files is shown and each file being processing. Doing 21 files on a dual 2.66 xeon mac pro took about 30 second but Fluke terminated with an error. We check iTunes and the files we all added. It is beta after all!

For an unfair killer test let's try a 450mb high resolution FLAC of Count Basie and Sinatra Live at the Sands. We start at 6:15. We get the same error but do not terminate as iTunes shows it copying the file. Wow, it took 1 minute to convert 1:16:03 of high rez audio! Let's test it out, we fire up the Spherex system and press play. Excellent! Great job by the Fluke project team. Highly recommended.

Fluke - http://blowintopieces.com/fluke/