Mac best practices

[Clayville]

I've read through several threads to try and get a grip on file conventions for Macs, but remain confused.

I've gotten as far as using Switch to convert wma files to something I can use. And 128K mp3s seem to be OK for auditions.

But when it comes to prefered formats for providing seps the guidance seems to be unclear... What do other Mac users do?

FWIW, I use OSX 10.3.9 and ProToolsLE 6.9 and without additional steps can create wavs or mp3s.

Thanks,
Clay

[NickT]

Clay,

most of the Mac users compress wav or aif to ape. I believe they use cocoamonkey.

http://translate.google.com/translate?sourceid=navclient&hl=en&u=http%3a%2f%2ftmkk%2ehp%2einfoseek%2eco%2ejp%2fmonkey%2f

There is another program out there and I will try to find a link. Maybe Ootle or Gerk can help.

Nick

[ootle]

I use cocoamonkey.....works great so far.

Ootle

[Letizia]

curious, does FLAC (lossless) compression work on Mac?

after searching google, i see it does. though everyone here uses APE files, FLAC seems to be a decent 2nd option.

http://flac.sourceforge.net/index.html

[Gerk]

Yep I use cocoamonkey as well.  Haven't had any problems using it at all. 

The most challenging part of working on the mac for me in this community so far has been the latest rounds of WMA files (with the latest media player codecs), which you can't playback,  let alone convert on OSX   I have a windows machine around that I do the conversions with now (with dbpoweramp).

Mark

[Clayville]

Thanks. I picked up the monkey and have managed to upload an ape'd wav successfully.

Guess I'll cross the new-codecs wma bridge when I come to it.

clay

[DoozerDan]

I got WMP on my Mac, so I can listen to the WMA files, but I don't think I can get 'em on Garage Band... Haven't tried, but I doubt it..  I use Cocoamonkey too.  Works fine.

I'll check out the FLAC think Letizia.

Dan.

[DoozerDan]

Well, I checked out FLAC, I have it on my 'puter now.  It looks like from what I've tried, that you can't convert MP3 files to FLAC, only AIFF so far, probably WAV to, but I couldn't do WMA ether...  And I can't play FLAC files, through WMP, iTunes, or probably anything else I have.. I'll try them some time.  So, so far, it looks like you can use the files to send to people, and you can change it to AIFF or WAV once you get it, but that's about as good as it gets, much the same as using Cocoamonkey, and APE files.  So it's a matter of using what everyone else has I guess.  Which is APE.  But still, looks good as a back up.

Dan.

[Gerk]

Yep FLAC is a good format but most of the folks around here use APE so if you can do them you're set on that front.

WMP on the mac plays any of the pre windows media v9 codec but what I suggest is to install the free version of flip4mac wmv components available at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/wmcomponents.mspx

These allow you to play wma files in some quicktime aware applications including quicktime player and Safari and Firefox.  If you have quicktime pro you can also directly export (most) wma to AIFF or WAV.  If anyone wants a howto for that let me know and I'll put something together and post it here.

Another great app to have around is the VLC media player available from http://videolan.org/vlc/  ... it's a real swiss army knife of a media player and can play most audio and video formats, and if you want to get really geeky it can transcode files on the fly so you can do conversions with it.  I've used it a couple of times and not had any problems doing wma conversions.  Again though it is not able to play a few of the newer Windows Media formats (both audio and video).

Lastly, there's an app called EasyWMA as well (a front end for the free utility ffmpeg).  EayWMA used to be free, now it's commercial (but pretty cheap from what I remember).  I can't tell you how it's working these days and I never upgraded once I had to pay for it  and the last free versions has problems with a lot of wma files.

Mark

[BassPlayer]

Wavpac Rulz

[adf]

...and one day all computers will be friends...

[Gerk]

Thought I'd add this one here for all the other Mac OSX users ... this little tool is the swiss army knife for OSX audio compression and decompression and is freeware.

xACT

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/21952

Supports encoding/decoding:  SHN, Wavpack, FLAC, TTA, APE and MP3 (using LAME)

Enjoy

[Era]

Hey all mac users..

Sometimes the .apes are pain. I found out yesterday that the new Adobe Audition CC open apes natively and you can render out mp3, aiff and wav formats Worked so perfectly for me