Dbpoweramp

iTunes doesn't play FLAC. J River Media Centre and Audirvana + are both good media players for the mac which will play FLAC. They both have free trials so you can make up your own mind. Both have good "audiophile" features, and J River especially has some very powerful searching and organising abilities, and it will also rip into FLAC. 

dbPoweramp comes with a batch conversion tool so you can convert all your iTunes rips to FLAC.  That's what I do.

Ah but if I have my rips in i Tunes AAC it is unlikely to upgrade them to FLAC, or am I wrong?

What bitrate AAC?  Any "lossy" AAC rips cannot be converted to lossless anything, such as lossless FLAC.  The losses occurred at your original ripping process.  If indeed you've previously ripped to a lossy format, I absolutely recommend re-ripping into lossless.

In my view, lossy is OK for iPhone listening, listening in the car, etc.  So you might keep your iTunes library for that and then re-rip to create a proper lossless library for home use. 

That's true.  My iTunes rips are lossless and can convert without problem.  You CAN convert the AAC but it can't regenerate lost information.  This could be a temporary thing while you re-rip and overwrite the AAC conversions.

You are right here. Among the usual file types, there are three main categories. Without going into the finer details you can say that AIFF and WAV-files are the near equivalent of whats on a CD. The contain the same data and have about the same size. ALAC and FLAC contain the same amount of information, but in a smaller file. Pretty much what zipping does to Word files. AAC and MP3 are lossy formats. They throw away some information to reduce the files to an even smaller size. This information cannot be regained.

You are of course correct. That was my big mistake. I have reripped 2 albums via dbpoweramp and loaded Jriver. Plays back nicely through the Muso but face having to rerip all my albums if i want it in FLAC format. Also got to figure out how to do all this through the NAS.

You've just got to bite the bullet and get stuck in. Otherwise you have downgraded all your cds into a lossy format. It isn't as bad as you think once you've got your work flow sorted. ime it's fastest to rip to a local drive, and then move stuff over onto your NAS, rather than rip straight to the NAS. The usual things that cause aggravation are compilation albums and multi-disc sets - if you have any, rip a couple, and make sure they behave as you want with your chosen server and control point. dBpoweramp covers all the options, but the defaults might not suit your way of using your music.

Another option would be to forget about reripping and subscribe to a lossless streaming service. I've ripped most of my collection but hardly ever listen to them as nearly all are on Tidal and also most of my listening is to music on Tidal that I haven't already got. Streaming sounds just as good as the rips (all in lossless FLAC). Qobuz is even better than Tidal.

Just a thought....

My rips still sound better, but if you are ok with it, then Qobuz/Tidal is a good concept for you.

Yes, already have Spotify and Tidal, but I do have a lot of CDs. The whole thing is getting quite schizophrenic with iTunes Music, Spotify, Tidal and Qobuz. Just thought it would be best to make a last stab at getting the CD collection on line at the highest quality possible. However, waves of ennui still wash over me. Would be lovely to have all the CDs on the NAS with all streaming opportunities open to myself.