Filed under: Audio, Freeware, Open Source
XLD: lossless audio decoder
One big complaint of audiophiles on the Mac platform is the limited support for FLAC, the very high quality, open source lossless audio codec. Apple, of course, prefers its own (proprietary) Apple Lossless format. The X Lossless Decoder offers some help for Mac users, however. Unlike many FLAC tools on the Mac it is a Universal Binary and offers conversion from FLAC/Ogg, Apple Lossless, Monkey's Audio, Wavpack, and TTA to WAV, AIFF, PCM, Ogg, AAC, MP3 and FLAC. If you just want to play FLAC/Ogg files in iTunes, the Xiph component will allow this, but it doesn't work perfectly.XLD is open source and a free download.
[Via The Lossless Audio Blog]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Matt said 8:39PM on 4-15-2007
This is very easy to do yourself if you can deal with scripting or the command line. I use audiotag 0.16 (which relies on metaflac and AtomicParsley for FLAC and ALAC respectively), flac and afconvert (part of the Developer Tools example code) to do this routinely between FLAC and ALAC.
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Tim said 8:49PM on 4-15-2007
What about Max: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/audio/max.html
it's free too
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Travis Bell said 9:10PM on 4-15-2007
I've been using xACT for over a year with absolutely no problems.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/xact
Open source and free to boot.
Cheers!
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error said 1:35AM on 4-16-2007
I use the export option in Toast 8 for FLAC encoding. Decoding is also easy: just drop the .flac files in the Audio section and (1) burn a cd, (2) export the files to another audioformat or (3) save it as a .Sd2f disk image, mount it (so iTunes will recognize it as a cd).
http://www.roxio.com/enu/products/toast/titanium/features.html
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Nick said 3:03AM on 4-16-2007
This spiteful little post doesn't tell anyone much except the following.
1. The author does not know the meaning of the word "propriety".
Compact Oxford English Dictionary:
"noun (pl. proprieties) 1 correctness of behaviour or morals. 2 appropriateness; rightness. 3 (proprieties) the details or rules of conventionally accepted behaviour."
2. The author would like to badmouth Apple.
Has the author any reason to believe that Apple uses ALAC for any nefarious reasons? No, he hasn't. Has Apple generally tried to game the public on formats? No, unlike Microsoft, it hasn't, Has Apple generally used an open format where one is available? Yes, it has.
Here is why it is generally believed Apple uses ALAC:
"From what I have been told, Apple went with ALAC because 1) MPEG4's ALS wasn't finished yet and 2) it would be cheaper and faster to them to create a decoder from scratch using technologies they knew were unpatented (or were easy to license if necessary) than running FLAC through several patent lawyers."
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=53975&view=findpost&p=483722
This sarcastic little boy's "of course" with his mis-spelt "proprietary" to the contrary, there's no reason to believe there is any more nefarious explanation than that.
It's also rumoured that FLAC will make it into Core Audio in Leopard.
If by FLAC/Ogg the author means the Xiph components will play Ogg FLAC files he is right. If, however - as seems more likely - he means it will play FLAC files and Ogg Vorbis files he is wrong on two counts.
First, Ogg is a container not a format. Secondly the Xiph QuickTime components will not play native FLAC files but only Ogg FLAC files - i.e., FLAC files in an Ogg container.
"XiphQT still does not support native FLAC file format."
http://xiph.org/quicktime/release_notes.html
The author also writes, "Unlike many FLAC tools on the Mac it is a Universal Binary," but gives no example of _any_ other FLAC tools that run under OS X. His statement is, therefore, not easily verifiable, but I believe it is incorrect. Max, Play and Tag from Stephen Booth, are certainly universal binaries.
The one piece of information that might have been of interest to readers is that where a CD has been recorded to a single audio file with an embedded cuseheet, XLD is capable of reading the cuesheet. It can use the cuesheet either to split the single audio file into multiple individual files or as a playing guide to enable it to play tracks within the single file. But you'd not learn this here.
More on cuesheets:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cue_sheet
In short, this was a shoddy piece. But I wouldn't have minded that, and I would have bit my tongue and passed on, if the author had not gratuitously sneered at Apple.
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Dimebag said 7:36AM on 4-16-2007
Ouch, author just got pwned…
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Rob said 8:44AM on 4-16-2007
Does anyone know of a good FLAC encoder that is a universal binary? All of the ones that I have seen are PPC binaries.
Rob
P.S. To respond to #5 -- I think Apple went with Apple Lossless since FLAC does not support DRM. In my view, Apple wanted an audio codec that supported DRM. Perhaps they forsaw that folks wanted audiophile quality audio not compressed audio (that sometimes sounds like the music was recorded underwater).
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