make a copy of flac files converted to MP4 or....

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GOS

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I know this is an odd request. A couple of comments first, to understand my question.

  1. I do not get good cell service locally. (as a result, simple streaming is not an option)
  2. I do not own a portable device for listening to music (other than my iphone)
  3. I did not bother to make an MPxxx copy of all my Flac files when I ripped all my discs. :(
Is there a way to mass copy all my music files on my NAS and down convert them to something like MP3 or MP4 or whatever would take up much less space and could be loaded onto a not so expensive portable music player? (by not so expensive, I guess I mean less than $250) Is this even reasonable? What about my multi-channel flacs? Same question....can they be converted down to a lower quality format AND down to stereo?
 
I forget if you are a PC or Mac..I usually convert all of my 44/16 files (FLAC or otherwise) to MP4 256 AAC using XLD.
Now regarding MCH , I have NO idea!!!
 
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Is there a way to mass copy all my music files on my NAS and down convert them to something like MP3 or MP4 or whatever would take up much less space and could be loaded onto a not so expensive portable music player? (by not so expensive, I guess I mean less than $250) Is this even reasonable? What about my multi-channel flacs? Same question....can they be converted down to a lower quality format AND down to stereo?

dBpoweramp Music Converter - mp3 converter, FLAC, WAV, AAC & Apple Losslesss. Free 21 day trial, download & convert

I know I used this in the past and it worked, though I think I had a hard time figuring out how to intelligently control the output directories. I think it will even do the channel mixing you're asking about, though I don't remember ever trying.

Unfortunately, the last W*nd*ws machine I had that installed on died and I haven't yet had a good reason to install it in the current one, so I can't check it out and potentially write a quick and dirty guide.
 
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Foobar has built-in AAC and MP3 encoders - simply right click a track or sequence of tracks, then select "convert" and "quick convert". No idea what it'll do with MCH files though.
 
I should have added - I ultimately want this so I can have my music when I'm out walking or jogging. Again, streaming is not an option.

Both the dBpoweramp I suggested and the Foobar2000 that sjcorne suggested will give you files that you can then move or copy to whatever device you want to use, so you should be OK there.

If you want to do a big pile of files at once, you might be happier with dBpoweramp because I think Foobar2000 will put all the output files into a single directory whereas dBpoweramp can dynamically create directories.

But that might not be a showstopper for you and, unlike dBpoweramp, Foobar2000 is free!
 
I use my old Samsung galaxy phone with the poweramp player/eq app(paid) it will play some unconverted multichannel files in stereo and some it won't but you can mount/unmount the microsd without powering off the phone to quickly load music from computer.
 
Both the dBpoweramp I suggested and the Foobar2000 that sjcorne suggested will give you files that you can then move or copy to whatever device you want to use, so you should be OK there.

If you want to do a big pile of files at once, you might be happier with dBpoweramp because I think Foobar2000 will put all the output files into a single directory whereas dBpoweramp can dynamically create directories.

But that might not be a showstopper for you and, unlike dBpoweramp, Foobar2000 is free!

Foobar can do it, just be precise on how you format the template for the output files.
%artist%/%album%/%title%
do a couple of test in order to get the results you want.

For mch files, before the steps above you can load the channel mixer plugin or see what's already on the dsp chain, make it active and configure it for downmix (that depends on the specific version you're running).

btw, i'm reg user of dbpoweramp by years, but foobar is a lot easier to customize for the output desired once you've got the basic tags.
 
Stereo only on those devices don’t forget.

Foobar can do a batch conversion of all selected album folders to another root folder. So it could easily convert all your selected stereo albums to mp3 for example. (One command, walk away and all album tracks converted to mp3 with tags to another disc)
 
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And you may need to resample 96/24 to 48/24 or even 48/16, you should check what your devices can play. But you can include resampling in the Foobar conversion to mp3 or AAC or whatever you go with.
 
Foobar has a down mix option so you could try that to convert 5.1 FLAC to stereo if you only have mch version of a favourite album on your NAS that you want on your iPhone.
 
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You can easily convert your MCH files down to 16/44.1 Stereo Flac using AudioMuxer..

then use Foobar or DBPoweramp to shrink the stereo files further..
 
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