ccpc - Audio

Apple's iTunes has become the most popular way to handle music and other audio on computers and mobile devices for good reason, it works very well.

However you should consider changing the default setting for importing music from Apple's proprietary AAC to MP3, if you want to listen on all Android or other MP3 players as well. I prefer to use the Higher Quality setting of 192 kBit/s for the best MP3 quality at a compact file size.

However many people will use Windows Media Player which is now pretty good too. The same problem of file formats applies, but again you can change your format and quality settings from the default WMV.

I burn CDs with Nero Burn on PC and Burn on Mac. You can copy a lot of MP3 folders on one CD; the data setting seems to work fine. I tried burning a playlist direct from iTunes, to play in the car, but missed the file structure. 100 tracks in a row take a long time to skip through to select albums or tracks.

I recently subscribed to Spotify (9.99 a month) for unlimited streaming, downloading (to 3 devices) and no adverts). I now use this for virtually all my new music, usually saving complete albums, occasionally making playlists from selected tracks. But whilst I can play Spotify downloads in the car via Bluetooth, I still prefer to play from my music library on micro SD in the car.

Read Text Aloud Select text and press Opt-Esc on Mac. I customise Text and Speech in System Preferences to Monica for Spanish text.

Google's Chrome browser has a Music Player application so others can play shared music directly from your drive. Ideal for individual music tracks or audiobook previews.

On mobiles, CloudBeats (iOS) and CloudAround (Android) also let you stream audio files.

All this software is free, some with ad support which you can remove for a few pounds.

Echo & Home

I am evaluating Amazon Echo and Google Assistant, both of which work well with BBC Radio and Spotify. But I find verbal instructions are a bit hit and miss, and often end up streaming from my phone via Bluetooth or Chromecast.

FLAC

I decided to rip my classical and pop CD collections with FLAC a non-proprietary lossless system to play on my home hi-fi and other devices from a central server which is my WD backup hard drive.

To convert from CD, I now use Exact Audio Copy, and XLD (or Max) on Mac. Like EAC, Max uses MusicBrainz for retrieving file and track info, which does not seem as good as FreeDB, especially for classical.

Then I use MP3tag on PC to tweak track names and add missing cover images. I add track numbers to filenames and titles to ensure that music plays in the intended order from my WD server.

I struggled to find Android apps to play gapless FLAC tracks, to avoid unwanted breaks in CDs such as Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, and some classical albums. Spotify app plays gapless well.

For my selected M4A or MP3 files on my Android phone, I use Poweramp for classical music, also Folder Player for its folder hierarchy.

I had intended to standardise on AAC (M4A) for better reproduction than MP3, but my car stereo trims several seconds off many tracks on playback.

At home I stream FLAC files via wifi to my Android phone or tablet, using HiFi Cast or the oddly named BubbleUPnP. Both handle FLAC files (even gapless on some devices) remarkably well. I can then listen on headphones or on Bluetooth Audio devices, such as my Q-Acoustics BT3 hifi or Bose SoundLink Mini.

Max can also quickly convert FLAC to other formats, such as Apple's AAC or Lossless, for Mac, iPhone, iPod etc.

Fluke is a small Mac OS X utility that lets you listen to your FLAC files within iTunes.

To play most formats including FLAC I now use Boom Audio Player on PC, or MPlayerX (or Vox) on Mac. Boom is a minimal app which uses my directory structure rather than a proprietary database.

xACT stands for X Audio Compression Toolkit for FLAC etc. on Mac.

I use Smart Audio Book Player on Android, which seems to be quite reliable remembering where you last stopped listening.

I borrow quite a lot of audio books from Hampshire and Southampton library, but find the loan time limits restrictive.

I have finally subscribed to Audible (£7.99 a month) including one monthly download for an amazing selection and no time restrictions.

Text to Speech

I use an excellent Brazilian Mac app called Ocen Audio and a Chrome Extension Select & Speak to record text to voice, with a Female voice and Normal speed via a Multi-Output Device (combined with iShowYou Audio Capture so you can hear and record at the same time). You can choose from 27 languages including French and Spanish).

As this only works in Chrome, I either use Google Drive Docs or copy and paste from MS Word into a blank Google Doc.

Podcasts

I listen to a variety of podcasts mainly from the BBC and to help me with my French and Spanish learning.

I have used my iPod for years, with iCatcher! app for French and Apple's own iTunes for Spanish. More recently I use Podcast Republic on Android, which enables speed adjustment. See the Podcasts page on my French and Spanish websites for details and comments.