iPhone + FLAC Library + Song Ratings?

2009-12-08 09:47:32

I'd like to use my iPhone to rate songs, but apparently I can only do this if I let iTunes automatically manage my library. However, all my music is in FLAC, encoded as MP3 just for the iPhone and deleted immediately afterward. Is there any way I can rate songs on my iPhone without having to retain the transcoded MP3s on my computer?

iPhone + FLAC Library + Song Ratings?

Reply #1 – 2009-12-08 12:12:57

None, as far as I know. So, do you convert your songs each time when uploading them to your iPhone and delete them afterwards?

iPhone + FLAC Library + Song Ratings?

Reply #2 – 2009-12-08 21:05:56

My converted library doesn't really take up more than 16GB, so I only have to do it once.

iPhone + FLAC Library + Song Ratings?

Reply #3 – 2009-12-08 21:36:40

Pretty sure that mediamonkey can sync back ratings and play counts from ipods/iphones. You would need the gold version and have the flac converted on the fly to mp3 when syncing instead of having a separate mp3 library.

You would lose out on genius playlists and any other itunes specific features, and still use itunes to sync your other media (apps/images/etc).

iPhone + FLAC Library + Song Ratings?

Reply #4 – 2009-12-08 21:45:31

I'd prefer to keep Genius Playlists and other such features.

iPhone + FLAC Library + Song Ratings?

Reply #5 – 2009-12-08 21:52:15

Well in that case, I don't know any solution.

a) flac doesn't work in itunes (at least on windows), so using itunes directly is out of the question.

b) I don't know of any solution to syncing tags from iphone/ipods back to flac or from the mp3 tags back to flac.

I would suggest, your only viable choice is to convert from flac to ALAC, then you would be able stay within the itunes walled garden and keep all the features you want.

dbpoweramp can convert your flac to alac and should transfer all the tags as well. Since lossless to lossless, is well lossless, you lose nothing other than time and whatever disk space difference there is. I'd still recommend keeping your flac library as backup until everything is imported into itunes and working as you expect.

iPhone + FLAC Library + Song Ratings?

Reply #6 – 2009-12-08 22:36:35

No, no, I don't want to sync the ratings back to my FLAC files. I just want to keep them on my iPhone, but they reset whenever I plug my phone in.

iPhone + FLAC Library + Song Ratings?

Reply #7 – 2009-12-09 00:31:18

Alright, just so I am clear, I think I need to go over what you want.  You have a library of FLAC files that you transcoded for iPhone playback, manually synced them to the iPhone, and then deleted them off of your computer.  You rate the songs on your iPhone, plug it into your computer for another manual sync session, and all of your ratings are deleted.  Is all of that correct?

I see that you have 16GB of lossy files.  Why not just keep the lossy files on your computer.  Use whatever software you want to manage the FLAC files, transcode the files, and then use iTunes to manage the lossy ones.  Set your iPhone to auto sync and that will be the end of the your problems.  I am not sure why iTunes is deleting the ratings after manually syncing with your iPhone.  That is rather strange performance.  I have not tested this on my iPod as I use auto-sync with it (iTunes manages my lossy files which I rate both on my iPod and in iTunes, the ratings are transfered both ways).

iPhone + FLAC Library + Song Ratings?

Reply #8 – 2009-12-09 01:47:11

Yeah, but I don't really have 16GB available to store files that I'll never use anyway. Oh well.

iPhone + FLAC Library + Song Ratings?

Reply #9 – 2009-12-09 16:26:37

Go to Best Buy and purchase a 160GB USB 2.0 hard drive for $35.  It isn't all that difficult and storage prices have drastically come down.  I see absolutely no need for anyone these days to use their iPods/iPhones as the sole storage device for their lossy music.  That is just asking for trouble as they often need to be restored in order to solve software/firmware issues.