Flac and Ipods
 

my entire library consists of flac files ripped from cds. i just got an ipod as a gift and would like to be able to sync my ipod with winamp without losing audio quality. is this possible with winamp? i do not want to have to convert the files into something else if at all possible.

The way you do it is to keep your library on your PC in top quality FLAC, but use "converted on the fly" files when synching your iPod.

The iPod can't play FLAC. but as most iPods have rubbish headphones, this does not really matter. Plug in your iPod, and the drag your choice of music onto (you will find it listed in the "Portables" section on the left. Or you could use the SendTo menu to copy it there).

Each track will then be converted into something the iPod can understand, before copying it to that iPod.

This gives you best of both worlds - portable music with a home collection kept in lossless format.

Also note - while the iPod is attached, go and look into your preferences and you will find you can adjust the quality and type of files that are placed onto your iPod. (I don't know the iPod file choices, so can't say what you'd find here. I know I can tweak the choice of MP3 quality on my generic MP3 player.)

Another way you could do it without losing quality is (note this could take some time) to manually convert all the songs with dBpoweramp Music Converter into ALAC files, basically Apples version of FLAC files. No quality should be lost. Good luck.

It should be noted that dBpoweramp costs money.

But, iPod only supports a few formats. So to answer your first question: Yes, you can listen to your lossless music on your iPod. BUT, you cannot do that without converting it to the Apple Lossless format (which obviously works on an Apple product).

Creating 2 lossless copies of your files may take a long time and a lot of space. Now, even I have a lot of HDD space, but I also have about 8000 songs. I can't imagine how much space that is all in FLAC, but honestly some cds aren't worth FLAC. Anyway, my point is you have several things to consider:

Your goal is to listen to lossless on your iPod. Ask yourself:
1) Are you willing to invest the time and HDD to have duplicates?
2) Does your iPod have enough space hold your library in lossless? If it doesn't, are you okay with constantly syncing different songs?
3) Are you going to buy or do you already have a superb pair of headphones?
4) If you are an audiophile, will you buy or do you already have an amp for the iPod?

If you said yes to all of these, then go for it. If not, I can relate my setup to you: I've had Winamp calculate ReplayGain for everything, I'm using the non official ipod plugin ( ml_ipod.dll ) which writes the gain in as the iPod's "Sound Check" values, an good bitrate for all the transcoded FLAC files, and I have a decent pair of headphones. Sounds pretty good to me. Plus I can fit all 80 GB's of music on.

Depending on the size of your iPod and the size of the music you want to place on it, the iPod does play .wav files.