I've never done anything with FLAC files before. It's always .WAVs for recording/editing and 320kbit/s MP3s for wide-compatibility playback.

So tonight I downloaded FLAC files from a Gov't Mule concert I attended the other night, and I was surprised that the compatibility for playback / conversion is so low. It seems like so many of you use FLACs for everything.

I couldn't even open them in Sony SoundForge or Adobe Soundbooth... my two "go-to" programs for sound editing, and Windows Media Player wouldn't play them.

So, I Googled convertors, and WINAMP came up. "Hey...I recognize that name from posts on the Axiom forums...I'll download that!". Well, now that I have, I can't find any way to convert the files (though I've achieved playback). F1 ain't no Effin' help.

Am I missing something with WINAMP, or do those of you that do conversions use something else?

I don't mind paying for software, but this is the first and probably the last time I'll be doing anything with FLAC files and I don't really want to pay $100 or even $30 to convert this one concert...

Any help appreciated...

The plot thickens....

Windows Media Encoder won't touch it, and though the specs for Sounforge lists FLAC files as compatible, it definitely won't open these.

Methinks these files have DRM crap attached...

Could be. Where did you get them? Were they Archive.org or paid?

I'm surprised, though. I didn't think FLAC had DRM capability.

Are you trying to go to WAV or to MP3?

You could try to download something (like, oh I don't know, Grace Potter?) from Archive.org and see if your current method gives you different results with different files.

Audacity? Foobar?

I am interested in what happens next.

Never mind. I found instructions for converting FLAC files to WAVs with WINAMP.

It's just not at all intuitive. I was looking for something that made sense... Like File--> Convert File.

Stupid me.

Either way, they're converted to WAVs where I can now re-EQ them a bit, burn CDs, convert to MP3s, etc.

Thanks for looking out for me though, Tom. My patience is not in abundance of late.

I recomment dbpoweramp. Not all converters are created equal,and this is one of the best.

I use Easy CD-DA Extractor almost 100% of the time, but back when I had to convert my whole music library, dBpoweramp was the ticket.

I use dbpower amp as well and like it a lot

I use EAC for secure ripping to FLAC, it's free and well respected. I'm not sure if it could convert FLAC back to WAV thou.

I use "flac.exe -d" to turn FLACs back into waves.

Hey Mark,

Do you need to edit them or just play them?
Winamp and Foobar will play .flac files no problem as will others probably mentioned.

For conversion to wav or MP3 I use EAC as well. It's not intuitive but it's powerful and it's accu-rip feature has saved my ass on fixing up some scratched CDs I tried to rip. (It can get small sections of missing bytes from a huge library of CDs that other acu-rip users already ripped.)

I also tried dbpoweramp until it's free trial ran out. It worked well and is much more intuitive to use but since I already had EAC configured to be simple for me, I saw no need to pay for another program.

Like many here, I keep dual libraries. FLAC for home use and MP3 for portable devices.

Edit:
OK, I just read where you did want to play with the originals so you can ignore my first question.