[Flac] ho do I encode multi channel flacs

[J.B. Nicholson-Owens]

Andrew Henry wrote:
> I have a 4.1 channel track, I rip it to 5 separate mono wav files.
>
> Is it possible to encode these independant files to one single multi-channel
> flac file with flac?

I don't know how to do this with flac(1).  My best guess is to somehow 
make a multichannel WAV or AIFF file then encode it with flac to make 
the multichannel FLAC file.  I have not tried this.

I can help you do this task with Audacity 
(http://audacity.sourceforge.net/), a GUI sound editor.

Load the tracks into audacity, and (on GNU/Linux) pick Edit -> 
Preferences... and make sure that the Import/Export preferences are set 
to "Use custom mix (for example to export a 5.1 multichannel file).  You 
can drag the tracks up and down or pick "Move track up"/"Move track 
down" in the track pop-up menu to reorder the tracks.

To make the FLAC file pick File -> Export... and FLAC as your output 
format.  You'll be able to assign tracks to channels as you wish just 
before Audacity makes the multichannel FLAC file.

Nautilus properly identifies my test FLAC file as a 5-track FLAC file. 
Audacity also loads it and shows me the tracks.

Good luck.