How to transcode FLAC to mp3 on the fly

Question

I am using minidlna / ReadyMedia-Server to stream my music files in my network.

Unfortunately one of my players is unable to read FLAC files, so I am looking into a solution on how to transcode all FLAC files to mp3-format

Answer 1

I found a pretty simple solution, that should also work with other streaming services and is not bounded to minidlna / ReadyMedia

Check out mp3fs https://github.com/khenriks/mp3fs

Quote: mp3fs is a read-only FUSE filesystem which transcodes between audio formats (currently FLAC and Ogg Vorbis to MP3) on the fly when opened and read.

This can let you use a FLAC or Ogg Vorbis collection with software and/or hardware which only understands the MP3 format, or transcode files through simple drag-and-drop in a file browser.

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I installed it via sudo apt-get install mp3fs

Mounted my Music-HDD folder that contains my FLAC and WAV files to the mp3fs filesystem:

sudo mp3fs -b 320 /home/alex/Music-HDD /home/alex/mp3-Music-HDD/ -o allow_other,ro

modified my /etc/minidlna.conf to point to the correct path:

media_dir=A,/home/alex/mp3-Music-HDD 

and restarted the service:

sudo systemctl restart minidlna.service 

Now my player is able to play the FLAC files.