FLAC To MP4 Converter
FLAC is a Free Lossless Audio Codec that is pretty popular with music fans and especially self-described audiophiles. This includes both Windows and Linux users, and various software tools are available for dealing with FLAC files.
However, for some strange reason, FLAC-support is next to none on the Mac. Which might be a problem if you want to listen to your high-quality audio files in iTunes. Also, some older hardware players don't support FLAC at all.
So what can you do in this situation? Convert the .flac files to a format that is recognized by iTunes/whatever other application you're using. In the case of iTunes, MP4 is probably the audio format you're looking for. For portable MP3 players, you would obviously need to convert the FLAC to MP3. However, in this article I'll focus on the flac-to-mp4 example.
There are various utilities out there that you could use. If you're currently runing Windows, I would suggest the dbPowerAmp converter. You can get it for free and it supports a whole lot of audio formats, including MP4.
You can see an illustrated example of how to use dbPoweramp in this flac to mp3 converter guide (the example doesn't use MP4, but it does describe the interface and settings pretty well).
In case you're using Mac OS X, dbPowerAmp will be out of question as it doesn't have a Mac version. Instead, use the X Lossless Decoder. XLD is a fast converter that supports a number of lossless formats and has a nice GUI. It can convert between FLAC, MP4, M4A, Ogg, Wavpack and other formats.
Good luck and enjoy your brand-new MP4 music.
