Here is what worked for me based on my very rudimentary UNIX knowledge: This probably misses several obvious shortcuts

1. sudo mv fbits_etc.tar /. (Moves fbit_etc.tar to the root directory - requires your admin password)

2. cd /. (call root directory)

3. sudo tar xvfz fbits_etc.tar (unzips fbits_etc.tar into root directory)

4. mv *.flac /usr/local/bin/ (move whatever flac files you want to test to the bin directory. Needs the source directory in front of *.flac)

5. cd /usr/local/bin/ (goes to bin directory)

6. ls (list the files in the bin directory to make sure your flac files are there)

7. fbits *.flac (executes fbits on whatever flac files are in the bin directory)

Thanks wgscott.

Nice! I just checked the new Van Halen downloads from HDtracks. Full article to come :~)

Just to clarify, the flac stuff is all open-source, and the shell script

should really be credited to users "nu774" and "skamp" @ Hydrogen Audio. Passing that test is no guarantee that the material is genuinely 24 bits - it only detects crude zero-padding, and any filtering, rate conversion or dithering will hide the zero bits.

Thanks also to Julf for finding this, showing it to me, showing me how to use it, and suggesting I make the dependency libraries available so this could be used on OS X.

Thanks wgscott and bottlerocket for the detailed instructions, but I still need help Not being a user of terminal I am probably making some stupid error.

I have the downloaded file, "fbits_etc.tgz'" on the desktop, type in the line "sudo mv fbits_etc.tgz /." and then get this error message:

mv: rename fbits_etc.tgz to /./fbits_etc.tgz: No such file or directory.

Any help would be appreciated I have a number of downloads that I should like to run.

Thanks.

Sorry. Sorted the problem out. Needed to put in full directory location. Script runs nicely. Problem now is that I cannot get the files into the bin directory, even using the full directory location, but the script runs well on individual .flac files.

Is there a similar utility for ALAC files?

No, but in my case I just use XLD to convert from ALAC to FLAC to do the test.