Converting ALAC>FLAC Loses Total and Sort Tags

[GBrown]

I have been using ALAC as my lossless preference as our household had a 3-1 lead in iOS over Android support. Until now I have been able to work with most players for either format and not had any issues. However I now have one. Alpine car systems don't (currently) support ALAC. :(

I have tested several batches to convert ALAC to FLAC to trial this function using dBpoweramp. Seems the audio is handled correctly. However many of the tags fields that exist in the ALAC files were dropped during the conversion process. I would have thought the SORT fields would have been carried over as-is. And the fields for Totaldiscs and Totaltracks as well, or at least map these to the correct FLAC tags if necessary. This impacts my current folder/file naming structure that uses all of these.

I could not find any DSP effect that would help with this. Does anyone have a suggestion to have this information carry over during the conversin from ALAC to FLAC?

[BrodyBoy]

I have had similar issues, as I primarily use ALAC and the extensive tagging profiles that I’ve developed over the years don’t map directly when I convert to FLAC. And more commonly, it’s an issue when I convert FLAC files (typically purchased from Presto) to ALAC before adding them to my library.

Some tags are used in FLAC encoding that aren’t in ALAC, and vice versa. You can try setting up your own mapping functions for the important tags, but even that won’t always work.

I generally load both versions into mp3Tag and run some actions (macros) I’ve developed to ensure that the tags are complete and consistent. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to fully accomplish this during the conversion itself.

[GBrown]

I generally load both versions into mp3Tag and run some actions (macros) I’ve developed to ensure that the tags are complete and consistent. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to fully accomplish this during the conversion itself.

I'm going to do the same. It's just an extra few steps, but for a batch of 20k files.

[BrodyBoy]

I'm going to do the same. It's just an extra few steps, but for a batch of 20k files.

Good luck! 20K files will take a while, but it can be done. A couple notes, from my own experience with this:

• There's a maximum batch size to try and process in mp3Tag at once. Probably depends on each computer's specs...for me, it's usually around 600-700 files...but beyond that, it bogs down and the waiting becomes counter-productive.
• Early on, make sure your protocol and/or custom actions are accomplishing everything you want. You don't want to get half way through and realize you have to go back and re-do them because you forgot something or you're not getting the desired experience in your Alpine player.

[GBrown]

There's a maximum batch size to try and process in mp3Tag at once. Probably depends on each computer's specs...for me, it's usually around 600-700 files...but beyond that, it bogs down and the waiting becomes counter-productive.

I've never had a problem with this in mp3tag. Just nailing down what needs to be transferred from one tag field to another to keep this player happy. These files are copies from the main library so I'm not worried about anything that needs to be revised later.

[Spoon]

You would have to right click one of the Apple lossless files >> edit ID Tags

To see how they are presented, then do the same in a flac file the player is happy with. There is no standard for tagging those fields in FLAC to down to the player.