Why can't Pro Tools import FLAC files?

[Teej]

Originally Posted by thin ice

To be fair, it was always a relatively niche format. Now with drive space not an issue, those that don’t go for mp3 can use wav anyway. There are many free converters.

Apple phased out headphone sockets, CD drives and other things to move forward. Maybe they just see it as bloating the system for a format not many use?

I would argue at this point, FLAC is the de-facto standard for archiving lossless music, two main reasons:
-WAV does not carry metadata. FLAC is fully taggable.
-FLAC size reduction is dependent on the program material, it can vary from negligible to extreme. An extreme case is digital silence (like preceding hidden tracks.) FLAC stores digital silence as a few bytes, no matter how long it is. (same with ZIP...but there are no native ZIP players FLAC is kinda like audio optimised ZIP.)

Side-note: Loud mastered music tends to data-compress poorly with FLAC; classical music compresses very well. If storing a very large music collection, the difference can be significant, especially if lots of jazz/classical/vinyl rips are being stored.

[thin ice]

Originally Posted by Teej

I would argue at this point, FLAC is the de-facto standard for archiving lossless music, two main reasons:
-WAV does not carry metadata. FLAC is fully taggable.
-FLAC size reduction is dependent on the program material, it can vary from negligible to extreme. An extreme case is digital silence (like preceding hidden tracks.) FLAC stores digital silence as a few bytes, no matter how long it is. (same with ZIP...but there are no native ZIP players FLAC is kinda like audio optimised ZIP.)

Side-note: Loud mastered music tends to data-compress poorly with FLAC; classical music compresses very well. If storing a very large music collection, the difference can be significant, especially if lots of jazz/classical/vinyl rips are being stored.

Really good point about the metadata. I guess you need a DDP for wavs to carry any information.

With all these software requests, I expect it has to go down to demand though.

[BarneyBarry]

I always download music in this format, but then I need to go to REAPER to convert, and then to PT

[JFreak]

Originally Posted by thin ice

Apple phased out headphone sockets, CD drives and other things to move forward.

Headphone socket is back (at least on this 2022 m2 air) but you have a good point. Have not needed optical media since cannot even remember, maybe +10yrs.

[JFreak]

Originally Posted by Teej

Side-note: Loud mastered music tends to data-compress poorly with FLAC; classical music compresses very well. If storing a very large music collection, the difference can be significant, especially if lots of jazz/classical/vinyl rips are being stored.

... and most outsource that storage for Apple or Spotify regardless of the format. Last time I saw a "very large music collection" on offline storage was when 10MBps internet was fast. Now with gigabit downloads offline storage is generally not needed.

[Wolfgang Eller]

What is FLAC?
Never heart.
Never used.
Not needed.

[TimNielsen]

Originally Posted by Top Jimmy

1) There’s no demand for it.

2) Pro Tools would never implement a format natively that required a codec to read/write, that goes against its core philosophy. That leaves it as an import/export option only and there are already many freely available external options that can do this.

3) Open source and closed source aren’t necessarily compatible just because someone desires it to be. PT is the oldest and has the greatest entrenched legacy.

1) BS. There is a TON of demand for it. Many of us have lobbied ProTools to support it for years. Not just for import, but natively.

2) BS again. PT can import and export MP3. That requires a codec too.

3) Huh?

[JingleDjango]

There's no demand for it! Because I said so!

[Matt Hepworth]

I keep MediaHuman (free app for Mac and Windows) handy for simple drag and drop conversions and bulk conversions.

Optical is still widely used. We burn CDs for clients regularly. It'd be nice if all clients were super up-to-date, but the more super up-to-date they are, the more they do on their own anyway, which is also a consideration. Luddites are always welcome and fully supported. ;-)

[Darryl Ramm]

A reminder that on Mac the built-in powerful/flexible afconvert (aka "audio file convert") utility supports flac file conversion and a lot more. Handy in that you can call from a shell script to batch process files etc. Some of the usage/options is a but cryptic. afconvert -h for more.

I suspect flac import/export should be added to Pro Tools.