Lossless audio

From Organic Design wiki

Lossless compression is a format that allows the original file to be perfectly reconstructed for the file.
Examples of lossless audio formats are:

  • FLAC - Free Lossless Audio Codec (.flac)
  • ALAC - Apple Lossless Audio Codec (.m4a)
  • Monkey's Audio (.ape)
  • WMA Lossless - Windows Media Audio Lossless (.wma)
  • WAV - WAVeform Audio Format (.wav)

Splitting FLAC from CUE:

Via bash:

shnsplit -f "FILE.cue" -t %n-%t -o flac "FILE.flac"

A good program for splitting CUE files and converting to FLAC is flacon.

Converting ALAC to FLAC:

Install libav-tools:

sudo apt install libav-tools

Convert "audio.m4a" to "audio.flac":

avconv -i audio.m4a -acodec flac audio.flac

Bulk conversion of ALAC to FLAC (converts all ALAC files in a directory to FLAC):

for file in *.m4a; do avconv -i "$file" -acodec flac "${file%.m4a}.flac"; done;

Converting FLAC to ALAC:

Install libav-tools:

sudo apt install libav-tools

Convert "audio.flac" to "audio.m4a":

avconv -i audio.flac -acodec alac audio.m4a