Beosound 5 and conversion of WAV and APPLE LOSSLESS FILES

Hi Comrades

I trust this post finds you well and that you had a great Christmas break.

I have recently purchased a Beosound 5 to replace my beocentre 2/ beoport as my digital music player. It will be installed later this week

My present system is a mac mini using itunes to play through the beoport and beocentre 2. I have a combination of:  MP3's, WAV Files and Apple Lossless (burnt from my CDS).

I understand there is no issue with MP3s, though this isnt my preferred format.

My issues/ questions are:

1. WAV files- I understand I can't get the cover art for the files, seems a shame to have a beosound 5 and not have the cover art! Can these WAV files  be readily converted to FLAC for example? I know I can convert to AAC or MP3 readily but only to 256 or 320 respectively. I dont really want to downgrade my library to compressed versions when I've paid for the full versions to begin with. If I must.. which is better the AAC or the MP3?

I also assume that converting to FLAC might be complicated as itunes doesnt play FLAC?

2. Most websites I use or know of that have the music I want (Dance remixes etc) only seem to use WAV or AIFF. I never see anything in FLAC that I want, apart from the odd jazz or classical album. Are there good websites were i can purchase dance remixes that use a codec that I can actually have work on my mac/ beosound 5 system?

3. WIll AIFF work on the Beosound 5 with cover art? I did ask B&O.. and they said they werent really sure and that maybe i could just try it...

4. Re all of my CDS already on my system as APPLE LOSLESS.. I assume there is nothing to do but re burn them on the new system allover again?

Any suggestions appreciated, particularly those that dont require a degree in computer science!

Regards

 

David

Hi David,

Hello from Melbourne!

I am not at home but I will need to look in to my e-mail history as when I had the BS5 but there were instructions from B&O how to get the cover art - it's a relatively easy process, no computer science required.  You could also ask your dealer for a copy but I won't be able to get it to you (which I will have to email to you) for a week until I'm home.

All of my files were burned as AAC, only a few MP3's; or they were purchased iTunes content which is the majority of the 3000 songs I have.  It might be good to know what the store has their files stored at on their demo unit.

iTunes uses it's own version of FLAC (Free Lossless) called Apple Lossless, if you so choose to rip using that 'method'.  Most purchased content will not be in FLAC (or any lossless), because of the size I would think.  Bigpond music has higher quality downloads that I have seen, but I don't think these are FLAC.

If all of your CD's are Apple Lossless currently, when you get your BS5, I would move 1 CD to it's hard drive and give it a go. 

When they come and set it up for you, make sure they connect to your BM5, or if you have an encore, your NAS.  When I had mine I had to manually point it in the right direction.

Wishing you all the best

-Michael.

WAV files with cover art, no problem

see this thread and post 18 is good

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f11-software/wav-file-tagging-and-artwork-itunes-guide-3508/

There have been rumors of Apple lossless working on the bs5, but I don't think it is officially supported (those claiming it works have tweaked their system).  There is software that can transcode audio files from Apple lossless to FLAC (for example).  Dbpoweramp is one.  This is faster and more convenient than re-ripping from CD. 

Stan

Apple Lossless is an open source format since 27 Nov 2011...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lossless

So basically anyone with time and knowledge can implement it... *Hello B&O?*

Maybe ask Geoff Martin?

Hi All

Well here's the news so far on the set up of my new Beosound 5:

On the positive the sound quality is much improved from my previous Beocentre 2/beoport/DAC/Macmini set up- YAAAAY. Really happy with the sound quality-listening to lossles files.

Spotify works well and sounds acceptable at 320bit. A little furstrating that many of the tracks I find I can't listen to as 'they are not available in my territory'!!! It instead plays another song it thinks I might like instead of the 'Svenstrup and Vendelboe' remix I've selected.

Re Besound 5 itself- well the latest software update installed yesterday prevents you from uploading any cover art at all!!! So CDS iIrip dont have any cover art at all!!!!  the first CD ripped, did have the coverart prior to the technician updating the software. Then, no more coverart! Apparently this is a known problem with the new software?! That is what B&O in Sydney are telling me.

And now to a question- what lossless files can I download now into the beosound 5 via itunes?  I was told by the B&O technician that I need to download any tracks into Itunes and move them across to the beosound.. so that is WMA and FLAC excluded and WAV files have all the data missing. I really dont want MP3 or AAC... I dont see the point of having spent 7k on a sound system and 13k on speaker to have compressed files...

I'm hoping there is an easy solution.. ......

 

Regards

 

David

David, Unfortunately, iTunes + bs5 + Lossless audio is not a good mix. Bs5 supports flac and wma, but iTunes does not. You can find software that will transcode apple lossless to flac. Although, the last time I tried to move a flac file to my bs5 via BeoConnect on Mac, it did not allow it - gave an error about .flac being an unsupported file type). This was at least a year or so ago so perhaps this has been fixed. I think I was able to drag-drop the fiac files using finder, or I may have used my work computer (windows)... I got them there some how. Stan

The short answer regarding BS5 and sound quality is: WMA Lossless if you can live with the file size and lack of meta data, otherwise: 320 kbps.

Roger

Roger:

The short answer regarding BS5 and sound quality is: WMA Lossless if you can live with the file size and lack of meta data, otherwise: 320 kbps.

Roger

Not sure why you say WMA has a lack of metadata - it has the same metadata as MP3, nor why you exclude FLAC which also works fine.  Perhaps you have confused WMA with WAV (which does lack metadata, but recently saw a link saying there is a workaround for this, but cannot find this link this morning  - WAV is much larger than WMA or FLAC lossless as it is not compressed).  

I did miss WAV in my response, but I don't know why anybody would use it given you can get the same sound quality from FLAC at a smaller file size (unless maybe iTunes supports WAV, and then you don't need 2 copies of the file).

BTW, the program I used to convert my apple lossless to FLAC was XLD.

Stan