Got fed up of my music collection “subset” (that I travel with) being so large…
On my NAS - about 2/3 to 3/4 are FLAC…
But - when I listen to music from portable “subset” it’s almost always over Bluetooth - so having FLAC format makes no sense - as BT audio is inherently “lossy”…
So today - I’ve been slowly converting any folders of FLAC music back to mp3 - in my subset collection…
So far I’ve saved over 100GB - there’s no point having lossless audio in the stuff I carry around on my phone - as I hardly ever listen to that stuff via analog means - it’s almost always via bluetooth headphones (including bone conducting headset) - so FLAC doesn’t make any sense. When sitting at my desktop, with my Pop! desktop connected via Gigabit to my NFS share on my NAS - with good headphones connected via analog - I can tell the difference between an mp3 and an flac version of the same song…
But over BT? No - they sound the same to me (but neither as good as analog audio from vinyl!)…
I’ve been a bit cavalier - but not overly concerned - anything I inadvertantly delete on my subset collection - should be still available in lossless format from the main music file collection on my NAS…
I was doing stuff like “convert-it $ARG-FLAC ; delete-it $ARG-FLAC” - and messed up a few folders on my subset collection… but easy enough to restore from my NAS…
Summary - I have a symlink to my flac-2-mp3 script as “flacco” :
for F in $(ls) ; do echo -e "\t --- $F ---" ; flacco $F ; rm -Rf $F ; done
BTW - “flacco” was a clown on late night TV in Australia (on the right) :
OK - hit the old “prefix two digit numbers with a zero issue” again - actually twice recently…
Couldn’t remember how I resolved the first one…
Spent ages trolling back through my shell history and couldn’t find it…
List of 158 files (music files)… 01..99 - Song.mp3 - then 100..158 - Song.mp3 - that doesn’t sort properly on my system… I don’t use tags or metadata to organise my music (I do use tags - but not for that).
Had to do the same thing again when I had them all as FLAC files (purchased on Bandcamp Friday).
Previously if I found something tricky I couldn’t resolve - I’d save it in a shell script “collection” of previously used regex… Forgot the first time…
Anyway - I found it (in my shell history) and saved it in my shell script regex repository (this only works if the number is the start of the filename):
# Pad 2 digit number in filename to 3 digit with leading zero...
rename -n 's/^/0/' ??\ *.flac
(“-n” means a dummy run)
Buggered if I can figure out how that works 
I “rewrote” my “flacco” script to also copy, then remove the converted mp3 album… new script is called “calfo”…
e.g. :
╭─x@titanii ~/MPZ/WOLFE-Chelsea
╰─➤ ls -al
...
drwxrwxr-x+ 2 x family 13 Aug 22 11:09 2026-TheDark-FLAC
...
╭─x@titanii ~/MPZ/WOLFE-Chelsea
╰─➤ calfo 2026-TheDark-FLAC
...
going to rsync and then delete /mnt/BARGEARSE/MPZ/WOLFE-Chelsea/2026-TheDark-mp3...
rsync --remove-source-files -az /mnt/BARGEARSE/MPZ/WOLFE-Chelsea/2026-TheDark-mp3 /home/x/ResilioSync/Music/WOLFE-Chelsea/.
removing empty folder /mnt/BARGEARSE/MPZ/WOLFE-Chelsea/2026-TheDark-mp3...
╭─x@titanii ~/MPZ/WOLFE-Chelsea
╰─➤ ls -al /home/x/ResilioSync/Music/WOLFE-Chelsea
...
drwxr-x--- 2 x family 4096 Oct 1 11:57 2026-TheDark-mp3
...
Took me a while to figure out rsync --remove-source-files doesn’t remove the folder - only the files contained therein…
───────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
│ File: /home/x/bin/calfo
───────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
1 │ #!/usr/bin/env bash
2 │ # grab the flac files in $PWD and convert to mp3 (320k)
3 │ PROG=$(basename $0)
4 │ IFS=$(echo -en "\n\b")
5 │ ALBUM=$1
6 │ # change "-mp3" at end of dir to "-flac"
7 │ MP3ALB=$(echo $ALBUM |sed 's/-FLAC/-mp3/')
8 │ # remove spaces from dirname :
9 │ MP3ALB=$(echo $MP3ALB | sed 's/\ //g')
10 │
11 │ if [ $# -lt 1 ] ; then
12 │ echo "need an argument"
13 │ echo "... probably a folder with -FLAC in the end of the name..."
14 │ echo "e.g. 1971 - If I Could Only Remember My Name-FLAC"
15 │ echo "e.g.:"
16 │ echo " $PROG '1971 - If I Could Only Remember My Name-FLAC'"
17 │ echo "... exiting now.... "
18 │ exit 1
19 │ fi
20 │
21 │ if [ ! -d $ALBUM ] ; then
22 │ echo "$ALBUM folder doesn't exist..."
23 │ echo "... so exiting doing nothing..."
24 │ exit 1
25 │ fi
26 │
27 │ check_it () {
28 │ if [ -d $MP3ALB ] ; then
29 │ echo "$MP3ALB folder already exists..."
30 │ echo "... so exiting doing nothing..."
31 │ exit 1
32 │ else
33 │ mkdir $MP3ALB
34 │ chmod 0750 $MP3ALB
35 │ fi
36 │ }
37 │
38 │ echo $MP3ALB
39 │ echo "source : $ALBUM - destination $MP3ALB"
40 │
41 │ convert_it () {
42 │ cd $ALBUM
43 │ for f in $(ls *.flac)
44 │ do
45 │ ffmpeg -i "$f" -ab 320k ../$MP3ALB/"${f%.*}".mp3
46 │ # find any cover art :
47 │ find . -maxdepth 1 -iname \*jp\*g -o -iname \*png -exec cp {} $MP3ALB/. \;
48 │ done
49 │ }
50 │
51 │ ARTST=$(echo $PWD|awk -F\/ '{print $NF}')
52 │ DEST="/home/x/ResilioSync/Music/$ARTST"
53 │ if [ ! -d $DEST ] ; then
54 │ echo "There's no folder for Artist : $ARTST... creating it now..."
55 │ echo "mkdir -p $DEST"
56 │ mkdir -p $DEST
57 │ fi
58 │ PARENT="/mnt/BARGEARSE/MPZ/$ARTST"
59 │
60 │ copy_it () {
61 │ if [ -d $DEST/$MP3ALB ] ; then
62 │ echo "$DEST/$MP3ALB exists ..."
63 │ echo "that album/folder's already there - exiting..."
64 │ exit 1
65 │ fi
66 │ file $DEST/$MP3ALB
67 │ echo "copying it now..."
68 │ echo "cp -r $PARENT/$MP3ALB $DEST/."
69 │ cp -r $PARENT/$MP3ALB $DEST/.
70 │ }
71 │
72 │ rink_it () {
73 │ echo "going to rsync and then delete $PARENT/$MP3ALB..."
74 │ echo "rsync --remove-source-files -az $PARENT/$MP3ALB $DEST/."
75 │ rsync --remove-source-files -az $PARENT/$MP3ALB $DEST/.
76 │ echo "removing empty folder $PARENT/$MP3ALB..."
77 │ rmdir $PARENT/$MP3ALB
78 │ }
79 │
80 │
81 │ check_it
82 │ convert_it
83 │ rink_it
84 │
───────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
That last bit (copy and delete source) took me the longest - but had some spare time yesterday to practise…
You may ask why the convoluted rsync, then rmdir? i.e. wasted double-handling?
For whatever reason - when I “mv” to ResilioSync I get messages about being unable to change the UID/GID … It still “does the thing” but I don’t like error messages…
