Convert FLAC to High-Quality MP3 (or WAV, or AIFF) for iTunes (OS X)

Something that has bothered me for a very long time is my inability to play FLAC audio files on my Mac. (FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec and does not play in iTunes.) Well, I’ve finally gotten it figured out. Just follow these simple steps.

1. Download xACT, which converts from FLAC to WAV or AIFF, and iLAS, which is an extremely high-quality MP3 encoder, better than iTunes’s built-in one. Install both of them.
2. Open your FLAC files in xACT. Convert them to either WAV or AIFF; it doesn’t matter which.
3. Import your finished WAV or AIFF files into iTunes (I usually just drag them onto Library on the left). If you want completely lossless files, you are done!
4. Most of us will want to save space (and enjoy playback with less of a system resource hit!), so create a playlist with any and all WAV and AIFF files you want to convert to MP3.
5. When you are viewing that playlist, open iLAS and convert to MP3! I use the default settings, which produce extremely high quality MP3s, almost losslessly.
6. Almost done! Now delete the WAV/AIFF files from your iTunes library and move them to the Trash. Manually edit the information on the songs, because unfortunately, WAV and AIFF do not support the ID3 tags that MP3 files have to store information about song title, artist, and album.

Also of note is that iLAS is great for ripping CDs. Instead of making a playlist, just click on the Audio CD and rip away!

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