xACT 2.4

Even though the name of this app, xAct, does not help much in guessing what it is about, everything becomes clearer when you know that it stands for X Audio Compression Toolkit. In fact, what xAct does is providing a graphical user interface for a series of command-line audio tools “running under the hood.”

The application has a straightforward, quite Spartan, interface, which is characterized by allowing you to access each tool from a different tab. By opening the Decode tab, for example, you can easily convert files in such compressed formats as FLAC, SHN, Monkey’s audio, Wavepack and Apple Lossless into WAV or AIFF. The following tab, called “Encode”, does exactly the opposite as it converts WAV or AIFF files into compressed formats. Similarly, there is the Lossy tab to convert lossless formats into MP3 or ACC files.

Next, there is the Checksum tab, which allows three main operations: verifying audio files as well as creating and verifying Checksum files. The tab labeled “shntool”, in turn, supports various procedures, which include joining PCM data from multiple files and splitting PCM data from a single file into various. Likewise, it helps comparing the PCM data in two files, among other things.

Fortunately, there is also the Tags tab in case you need to edit tags of files in any file format that supports them. However, it is far from being as powerful as other similar tools specifically intended for this purpose. more