Tutorial Using qaac without iTunes

Using qaac without iTunes

You don't have to install iTunes, you have to download it to use qaac command-line tool.

This topic is a bit complex, it depends on these settings in your format config:

• the Input Extensions and
• the Pipe Input checkbox as well.

Using qaac native input formats

From this qaac wiki: "PCM, WAV, ALAC, MP3, AAC(LC), and other LPCM formats supported by Apple AudioFile service. Also, qaac can read cue sheets." That means that you don't need anything else to read (transcode) these type of audio files with qaac:

• Input Extensions: WAV, ALAC, MP3, AAC, MP4
• Pipe Input: must be unchecked to use it this way

Extending qaac native input formats

From this qaac wiki: "When libsndfile-1.dll is installed with qaac, qaac accepts some more PCM formats available with libsndfile. Similarly, libFLAC.dll installation allows FLAC, wavpackdll.dll for WavPack, and tak_deco_lib.dll for TAK." You can download the latest dlls from the first post of this page (thanks to LigH): lossless_dlls4qaac.7z . Then just extract them into the same directory where qaac resides. You can also download MonkeyAudio in the download section if you want to deal with Ape files this way.

• Input Extensions: WAV, ALAC, MP3, AAC, MP4, FLAC, WV, APE
• Pipe Input: still must be unchecked to use it this way (since we still use "native" capability of qaac)

Using other Apple audio framework features

E.g. like these. Now you need the audio framework for these, but if you don't want to use any of these features (and probably a bit more) then you don't need it at all. Here's how you can "get" it without installing iTunes or QuickTime:

• downloaded iTunes x64, e.g. from here
• download and install 7-zip if you don't have it yet
• download makeportable.zip from qaac cabinet and extract it into the same directory where iTunes installer is
• run the makeportable batch file
  • it will extract all the required DLL's into subdirectories (QTFiles + QTFiles64)
• move the resulted QTFiles + QTFiles64 directories to the corresponding qaac flavoured directories that they should exist with qaac.exe or qaac64.exe in the same directory:
  • 32 bit:
    • qaac.exe
    • QTFiles*.*
  • 64 bit:
    • qaac64.exe
    • QTFiles64*.*
• download the icudt55.dll dummy file and overwrite the extracted original ones in each QTFiles* directories:
  • from LigH: "The "makeportable" batch file extracted all the DLL's from the iTunes64 installer which belong to iTunes' whole feature set; qaac needs only the encoder core. For encoding only, most of the content in the icudt55.dll is not required. But the file icudt55.dll can't be deleted, the encoder would refuse to work if it is not present. But you can replace the original files of several MB size with the tiny dummy DLL's, and the encoder still works."

That's it :) Now you can use e.g. --normalize switch with qaac in your format config.

Possible issues with qaac native input and solution for it

It can happen that certain files (mp3, flac, aac, etc.) can't be encoded this way, probably due to some small errors in these files, but maybe they can by using their external utilities (you have to download those command line utils: flac, lame, etc.). So, we crate a new format by duplicating our modified qaac-LC format profile, and change these to:

• Title: add e.g. pipe to the title
• Input Extensions: WAV (we only allow wav input!)
• Pipe Input: must be checked

Summary

• in this way we have a 2 presets to deal with "natively" supported qaac audio files:
  • use the no-pipe version always first (it's more efficient)
  • and use the pipe version for those files that failed to be transcoded by the no-pipe format