Windows Play and convert FLAC

Hi,

Can anyone recommend a piece of free software to convert FLAC files to AAC / MP3?

In addition, what a good lightweight no crapware media player that will play them?

Thanks guys,

 

Foobar is a good player for flac files, it's what I use, also really customisable if you're that way inclined.

 

+1 Foobar for playback - stock install excellent player but as George states - very customisable if that tickles yer fancy.

My install is stock and very happily Flac'ing (made up a verb) Stone Roses - Second Coming (re-living the youth) as we speak

 

DBPowerAmp is paid for, but worth every penny for any conversions.

VLC for playback, or a Linn DS

 

media monkey for playback is great

 

Another one for Foobar. I've used it for maybe 7-8 years now, and it's just awesome.

Tonight I wanted to shove some tracks I had on my Ipod, some of them were in FLAC.

Select Tracks > Right Click > Convert to same Directory > MP3 LAME > OK.

Done. 5 seconds of clicking for me, 15 seconds of processing for my quadcore, and I'm done.

 

VLC.

 

Great; thanks for the responses - I will check them out.

 

You use VLC for music playback??

 

Well, when it converts to every known format, it's nice.

Even plays modules dang well. .mod, .s3m, .xm.... Yeah, I'm that kind of guy.

 

Foobar or Musicbee for me. I prefer Musicbee for it's prettier layout, I don't want to have to fiddle with Foobar skins to get it looking decent.

 

Can't say I've ever come across something which foobar can't play tbh. I'm just surprised at VLC 'cos it's playlist feature sucks quite heavily. You wouldn't want to have a few thousand tracks sitting in that thing.

 

Foobar Cheesecake

 

+1 for Foobar and Lame Encoder (probably one of the best MP3 encoder available around)

 

Another +1 for foobar. I'm using it for ages and it's very lightweight (only 6MB). You can use it to convert your files aswell, but you need to install the codecs ofc.

 

What version are you using? I'm on 0.9.4.2 and my current usage is 98.7MB, with peak working set at 128.

 

Using Foobar v1.1.13 I top out at 18MB memory use even playing 24/192 Flac files.

 

Might be related to my playlist size, or perhaps just the fact that I steadfastly refuse to move to the 1.0 and over releases, since my config files don't work on them.

 

Probably the release. I just loaded up a playlist with 7000 tracks and ram usage is at 23MB.

 

My playlists tend to be significantly larger than that, and I always have multiple ones on the go at once. Could be that. I'll do some testing some time out of curiosity.