Surrender or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Apple

A while ago i went on a quest to find a replacement for iTunes, that would allow me to still use my iPod, but would do some other neat things that iTunes didn’t, and still doesn’t, do¹. I was also quite adamant about not getting into any proprietary audio formats, never minding that the MP3 format isn’t non-proprietary, but when looking at lossless formats, i didn’t want to give in to Apple’s. That left only one choice, FLAC. The drawback being, of course, that iTunes and the ‘pod don’t support it. I’d have used WAV (or AIFF), but there is no support for tagging those files, and i love my meta-data. I also wanted something that would work with my slimserver and player.

Water has passed under the bridge, my time and patience have been reduced, and i find myself looking for the easiest solution to my audio library woes.

So, while winamp was my solution for a time, i’ve re-enbraced iTunes, and am converting the CD’s that i formerly had in FLAC format to Apple’s lossless format. Fortunately, the slimserver will play and transcode Apple’s format, so i don’t loose out there.

I’ve also switched over to Apple products for my network, both an AirPort Extreme and an Express. I’ve been happy with both, despite a brief disappointment when i first got the Extreme home and it didn’t connect to my DSL provider. But, within a week there was a firmware update that fixed the problem, and i was all grins again. Aside from the wifi speed of the Extreme, i also acquired it for its USB port, so i can do printer sharing on the network. I finally don’t have to have a computer on all the time acting as a print server. The Express is to get the network into a room that isn’t wired, and i’m also using the AirTunes feature to get audio into the stereo there.

So, now comes the incredibly tedious task of re-ripping all the CDs we have. And hope that i don’t have to do it again!

1: Mostly transcoding on the fly while syncing. Man, i wish iTunes would do this! It would make it pretty much perfect - keep all your stuff on your huge HD in high quality, and then have it in smaller, lossy format (AAC or mp3) for the iPod.