Hi.
I’ve found the flac CLI program, but am looking for a GUI version to create USB music for my car (my earlier one had a CD player).
I just need to store the .wav (or perhaps .mp3) files on the drive, preferably with Band and Title information.
Suggestions?
At 66, I’m behind the curve on all the new audio stuff, so bear with me, please.
I use these two
SoundConverter- A dedicated audio transcoding utility built for the GNOME desktop and relying on GStreamer.
soundKonverter — A Qt graphical frontend to various audio manipulation programs. Features conversion, ripping and other audio manipulation functionalities.
They count for one only, then there is
WinFF — A GUI for the powerful multimedia converter FFmpeg. Features dedicated profiles for audio transcoding.
More info here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Convert_FLAC_to_MP3
I know you’re not looking for a CLI program but doing this there is SO EASY with SoX. In my mind, much quicker.
I seem to have phrased my question badly, apologies.
I do NOT want to convert .wav to .mp3.
I just want to make a USB thumb drive that will play on my car audio system. Flac seems to be the right format (my car can read that), and it should be possible to turn .wav files into flac files, no?
If it can display Band and Title: Great!
Thanks.
No.
You first have to convert them to your choice .wav or .flac or any other format you want.
To format a thumb drive to hold music files for a car radio, you should first ensure the drive is formatted in a file system that your car radio supports.
Commonly supported file systems include FAT32, exFAT, and NTFS.
However, FAT32 is often the most compatible across different car models, especially for larger drives. If your drive is larger than 32GB, you might need to use exFAT or NTFS, as FAT32 has a file size limit of 4GB per file.
I’m a little confused by this. I think the answer is yes. That should be a lossless conversion, too.
I think where @ne29914 is confused is because @1fallen included a link that reads “FLAC to MP3:”
That’s a lossy conversion that’s not what the OP was asking for.
This will depend on your car’s support for reading metadata and whether or not the file has metadata in it. AFAIK the WAV format doesn’t support metadata, so you would need to add this information yourself when or after the file is converted to FLAC. If it’s in the filename, it’s possible you can script that addition. Again, this is where making use of SoX on the command line is really nice.
My experience has been No, Due to a fat32 format, I’ve just gotten into a habit of the conversion first, before transferring files to a thumb drive.
Agreed, maybe if you offered a sample how to for SoX, it might help @ne29914 make a choice. 
I’m still confused. The OP asked if they could convert WAV to FLAC as opposed to the FLAC to MP3 you suggested in your link.
At the simplest level, sox original.wav new.flac but it is great for scripting.
What I provided is a way to convert any format/container to Flac not just .MP3.
I hope that clears your confusion.
ie:
Music/U2 - The Joshua Tree (Super Deluxe) 2017/CD1
└─> ls
'01. Where The Streets Have No Name.mp3'
"02. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For.mp3"
'03. With Or Without You.mp3'
'04. Bullet The Blue Sky.mp3'
'05. Running To Stand Still.mp3'
'06. Red Hill Mining Town.mp3'
"07. In God's Country.mp3"
'08. Trip Through Your Wires.mp3'
'09. One Tree Hill.mp3'
'10. Exit.mp3'
'11. Mothers Of The Disappeared.mp3'
CD1-Flac
'U2 – The Joshua Tree (Super Deluxe) (2017) 320 KBPS1.jpg'
'U2 – The Joshua Tree (Super Deluxe) (2017) 320 KBPS.jpg'
After the conversion:
│U2 - The Joshua Tree (Super Deluxe) 2017/CD1/CD1-Flac
└─> ls
'01. Where The Streets Have No Name.flac' "07. In God's Country.flac"
"02. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For.flac" '08. Trip Through Your Wires.flac'
'03. With Or Without You.flac' '09. One Tree Hill.flac'
'04. Bullet The Blue Sky.flac' '10. Exit.flac'
'05. Running To Stand Still.flac' '11. Mothers Of The Disappeared.flac'
'06. Red Hill Mining Town.flac'
And I now stand corrected, I can convert files on a “exfat” format Drive.
Thanks for all your replies.
I think my problem lies in that fact that I don’t know what the end result should be.
As an example, DVD movies need to be in a certain format with the files in a certain sequence on the disk.
So I may be overthinking this.
If it’s just a question of placing .flac files (with metadata) on a thumb drive, and then the player will work it out for itself, then it’s fine.
But I just don’t know.
That’s why I was hoping for a GUI program, ideally with a Wizard, that would guide me through the process.
Well, I’m pretty confident there is no tool that will do everything that needs to be done all in one, like “Car Audio USB FLAC Creator” or something 
Different makes, models, and years of different car will vary in their requirements, not only for the acceptable file formats, but also for the media which they use. So you will need to start with consulting your car’s manual and perhaps even asking a dealer and/or mechanic.
Although: you said you found a CLI tool? Which one? Did you try it? Did it work?
No, I didn’t find a CLI tool, sorry.
As there seems to be no conclusive answer to this issue, I’ll now experiment a bit myself by making different thumb drives and seeing how they work.
I’ll be back.
Update:
It’s been a sobering experience diving into this.
Testing my own car and those of friends’/acquaintances’ show that basically all OEM audio systems only support compressed audio.
They all supported MP3, AAC, WMA and OGG. FLAC never showed up.
I never found a complete GUI “Audio Authoring System”, but now work with ffmpeg for conversion. For mass conversion I use this:
for i in .wav; do ffmpeg -i “$i” -c:a mp3 "${i%.}.mp3"; done
For tagging the files (to show artist/title when playing), EasyTAG works really well.
A brilliant user on another forum posted this how-to:
https://forum.miata.net/vb/showthread.php?t=674391&highlight=usb+.flac
Hope this is still on-topic, otherwise apologies.
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