FLAC On A Mac


Forgive me if this subject has been discussed on this forum before, but I don't do much PC Audio and I get very confused.
I have downloaded some High Res content from HDTracks to my Macbook. These are all FLAC files. I tried transferring them to a flash drive to be played in two devices that are supposed to be FLAC compatible (most recently, the Marantz NA 7004 Network Music Player). These files won't play on either device.
They also won't play using the MacBook as the source, although I anticipated that.
Do I need some sort of a music management player to play these files? When I surf the net looking for conversion programs, most of them aim to change flac to mp3, which would defeat the purpose of trying to get a High Res file.
richardfinegold

Showing 1 response by mijostyn

Hi Richard. I do not know your Marantz unit well. If it has a USB input you are all set. Channel D's Pure Music program is designed specifically for Mac computers. It utilizes iTunes as the library and will play pretty much any file available. But, if you down load your files from HDtracks in ALAC they will download directly into iTunes with any conversions. Pure Music will do all the conversions for you. If you do not have a USB input anywhere you can get a USB to SPDIF converter.
Pure Music does a lot of neat stuff like up sampling and streaming. 
I have used it for three years and the only complaint I have is that it crashes once in a while. Support is great. Updates are free and if you want to upgrade to Pure Vinyl you just pay the difference. This is the program Michael Fremer uses. 
Another way to do it is change iTunes storage to ALAC and download ALAC files directly to iTunes which then will output the music in its native rate just like an MP3 file.This will take up a lot of space on your hard drive. 
I wanted to keep all my high res music separated from my MP3 library which I keep on my Macbook so I got a Mac Mini i7 with a fast small SS hard drive I think it was 125 GB and a 6 TB outboard hard drive. This computer does nothing but play music and surf the internet. Having your music in iTunes is great fun. You can make any play list you want easily, shuffle tunes etc. The only hang up is that you can only store music by one category, artist or composer not both. Modern music you store by artist but classical music you have to store by composer. I talked to Apple and the only way you can get around this is to make composer play lists or get a second computer for classical! Needless to say I started making playlists.