FLAC files seen by Audacity as OGG file?

[jazzer15]

I am fairly new to Macs. Today I downloaded XLD. I ripped a CD to FLAC and although each of the track files has an FLAC extension, the icon for the files indicates that it is an OGG file and that Audacity is the default program to open it. When I click on the file and it launches Audacity, I get an awful sound -- probably because it is trying to read the FLAC file as an Ogg Vorbis file. If I open the file with VLC, all is fine.

A couple of questions. First, does anyone know why Audacity was chosen as the default program and why it sees it as an OGG file?
And second, how can the default program for opening a file be changed?

Thanks.

 

[MacUser2525]

I am fairly new to Macs. Today I downloaded XLD. I ripped a CD to FLAC and although each of the track files has an FLAC extension, the icon for the files indicates that it is an OGG file and that Audacity is the default program to open it. When I click on the file and it launches Audacity, I get an awful sound -- probably because it is trying to read the FLAC file as an Ogg Vorbis file. If I open the file with VLC, all is fine.

A couple of questions. First, does anyone know why Audacity was chosen as the default program and why it sees it as an OGG file?
And second, how can the default program for opening a file be changed?

Thanks.

You want to open the preferences then with your Flac setting selected use the Option to un-check the Set OggS filetype and perhaps OggFLAC as well. This option allows you to use Fluke to play the Flac files in iTunes which unless you like it crashing all the time I don't recommend. The default option to open can be changed by right clicking in Finder using the Get Info on a single file then change the Open With at the bottom.

 

[jazzer15]

Thanks for the reply. I changed the default option to VLC, which solved my issue. However, I didn't quite follow the first part of your reply about opening preferences and "with the Flac setting selected use the option ... " It probably doesn't matter because I don't plan to play the Flac files in iTunes anyway, but I am curious. In what program were you suggesting I open preferences and what exactly did you mean by "with the Flac setting selected"?

Thanks again for the help.

 

[MacUser2525]

Thanks for the reply. I changed the default option to VLC, which solved my issue. However, I didn't quite follow the first part of your reply about opening preferences and "with the Flac setting selected use the option ... " It probably doesn't matter because I don't plan to play the Flac files in iTunes anyway, but I am curious. In what program were you suggesting I open preferences and what exactly did you mean by "with the Flac setting selected"?

Thanks again for the help.

XLD of course that is the program you said you used to convert them. When you open the preferences you select the FLAC from the list then press the Option button to get to where you can disable the ogg settings. BTW if you want to have the lossless files like Flac to play in iTunes then you can choose that option (Apple Lossless) instead of FLAC when you do the conversion/ripping. Does not matter which way you do it rip from disk or convert the ripped .flac to the already mentioned Apple Lossless .m4a files by dragging and dropping the .flac files onto XLD with the Apple Lossless selected as the Output format.

 

[jazzer15]

Got it. Thanks again. Don't know why I missed that in XLD the first time I looked.

At the moment (from my prior Windows life) I have my music files duplicated -- I have FLAC files, which I use for streaming to my stereo, and mp3 files which I use for my iPod and iTunes. It would be more streamlined to convert all of my FLAC files and rip any new CDs to Apple Lossless and use the Apple Lossless files for everything, but I prefer the smaller files for the iPod and prefer not having iTunes convert the lossless files when transferring to the iPod. If you have a suggestion for a better process, I would love to hear it.

 

[MacUser2525]

Got it. Thanks again. Don't know why I missed that in XLD the first time I looked.

At the moment (from my prior Windows life) I have my music files duplicated -- I have FLAC files, which I use for streaming to my stereo, and mp3 files which I use for my iPod and iTunes. It would be more streamlined to convert all of my FLAC files and rip any new CDs to Apple Lossless and use the Apple Lossless files for everything, but I prefer the smaller files for the iPod and prefer not having iTunes convert the lossless files when transferring to the iPod. If you have a suggestion for a better process, I would love to hear it.

Easy enough do what I do you can un-select the option in iTunes' preferences for it to manage your collection this stops it from importing the files in its library location thus leaving them in the location they were imported from. Now when opening iTunes if you hold down the option key then you get the ability to select different library/create that library to start with which you can then use to sync your iPod too with the lower bit rate files contained in the second library. If you use the Multiple Formats in XLDs preferences for output then you can choose to convert/rip to both the Apple Lossless and MPEG-4 AAC lower bit rate files at the same time getting the both copies you need/want at the same time. Just make sure to use the %f in the Format of filename: option for this or they will end up all in the same directory. I use %A - %y - %T [%f]/%n - %t this gives you a directory named Artist - Year - Album Title [Format] with as its contents files named with the Track Number - Song Title contained in it in the Output directoy: you specified or this contained in the input directory if you did not specify one for the output.