Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions using wma in itunes

I am considering purchasing an ipod. I have never had an mp3 player and I noticed that I could get an 80gig ipod classic for around $250 and a 160gig for around $350. The purpose of this is so that I don't have to carry around my 120 cd's in my car. I can just put the mp3 player on random and I have my own personal radio station ( I know I am probably the last person to get into doing this). Also, I can bring the ipod in my house and listen to them on my Axiom's as well. I have been waiting until I could get enough gig's so that I could store my entire music collection in a lossless codec and it seems that now is about the time.

Questions:

1. I have about half of my cd's ripped on my hard drive in WMA lossless. I need to convert these to what intunes uses to play them on the ipod ( I think it is ACC). Am I going to have any sound degredation converting WMA lossless to another lossless format? I really don't want to have to re-rip all those cd's. What would be the best way to convert them if there is no degradation? Just use itunes?

2. Can anyone recommend a good ipod dock that hooks up to a receiver? I have two Onkyo receivers so I was planning on getting a couple of Onkyo docks. But, they are a bit pricey at around $80.

- Nick

Itunes will do the conversion from WMA for you when you import your library and itunes can use AAC+ or something like that which is lossless if you so desire but you might not get your entire collection onto the ipod. I would stay with 256 bit rate if you have to go lossy.

ANd you are not the last person, I still do not own an Ipod nor Mp3 player.

No MP3 player here either and I will never own an i-anything.

Yeah, I don't really feel compelled to own a portable player since when I'm not at work I'm usually at home, where I can listen on my nice systems. I also never got a cell phone.

How about the movie, "I, Robot"? Hmm?

iCaramba!

I would make an exeption if it were true to the original book. I much prefer IA. Hmm. Gotta rent that again.

Its just a regular Caramba with a fancy apple on it for twice the price. No thanks.

Agreed. I read the book and liked it. I don't think I've made it through the entire movie, though.

Yeah, the book was great. I should get myself a copy of it and read it again.

jakewash,

I thought that itunes would be able to do the conversion of my wma lossless files to their acc lossless. But, what I am concerned about is if there will be any degradation in sound quality by going through this process. I thought that the way a lossless codec works is that it sort of zips up the file to take less space but not to the point where it will effect the sound quality. So the device can unzip it right before it plays it. It seems like as long as itunes was competently coded then it should just unzip the wma lossless codec and rezip it in the acc lossless codec and there is no sound degradation. Can anyone confirm this?

If I won't lose any sound quality then I can just save A LOT of time and let itunes convert all of my files in Windows Media Player to acc.

- Nick

Your assumption is correct. There will be no loss in the conversion.

Sorry, I wasn't clear enough, but as Eric said, you are correct. I haven't noticed a lack of anything when my wife uses her Ipod on the Axioms, then again I am not as familiar with her music.

A web page you might like then.

For the non-conformists. Anythingbutipod.com

The iPod is a great product but I won't buy one until their pricing reflects the actual technology instead of the hype. You can get so much more for less if you you are into being cool by being uncool.

Reminds me, heard an interesting radio interview of a famous blogger whose name I didn't catch talking about his published article about how it's no longer hip to be a hipster. Sounded interesting (well amusing anyways) if anybody has a reference, let me know. I'm too lazy to search as I'm shutting down for the day.

Thing is, the interface is often neglected as something worth paying for. I'm not that big on the current iPhone Classic OS, but the older OS with the scrollwheel is masterful.

I'd actually agree with that, unless you have an 72 GB playlist, then you get dizzy watching your thumb spin. However, to be fair, I think newer models have improved this feature by having the scroll speed continually increase the longer you wheel up or down.

For me it's about comparing the $ cost per Gig of memory along with the additional value add features that I might actually use. I payed $130 dollars less (no sale) for my 80Gb player verses an 80GB iPod. It also has an FM tuner which is somewhat weak but I like to use occasionally at the office and I am surprised to say i find the voice memo feature very handy at a times. The interface is only very slightly less intuitive than an ipod's and certainly I'd rate it as very easy to use. Is the wheel worth 130 plus dollars over my 'wheel free' unit with more features? For some maybe, but not for me personally.

Notice I didn't mention the name of my player although you could easily pick it out. I left out the name because I don't mean this to be a 'my product is better than yours' type response.

In fact, I'd argue Apple has an amazing product with the iPod and they are still not at a sales juncture where they even need to consider pricing it cheaper. Why would they? However, I'm a spreadsheet nerd and when I compared all my possible player choices side by side, the iPod models I considered fell short when I factored in price.

I hope that came off as an objective comparison rather than a rebuttal. That's tough to do when sarcastic humor is more my forte.

I'm really still waiting for a large capacity player with a good internet browser. The not yet released Cuwon looks promising. The Apple Touch is a great example of this new feature set combo but it is currently limited to only 32GB and there is a HUGE premium in price for it's nice thin size and (I would argue) novelty.

Again, it all comes back down to 'Just buy whatever makes you he most happy, regardless of how you get there'.

OK, maybe I'm just spewing out rants because I'm currently in a late night phone tag war with a competitor telco. with whom we share a client (long story.) They will just not listen to reason and I refuse to let the customer suffer because of it. Oh, and did I mention, I'm supposed to be on vacation. heh heh. Good thing I have that sense of humor.... Now where is that handgun post again????

Then there's me: neither my wife nor I have ever paid more than $150 for an iPod--been lucky, I guess.

Santa brought mine to me!

I just purchased the 80 GB Zune player (I'm also an anti-I anything) and it's a great MP3 player. Yes 80 GB is a lot but I've already put 40 GB of music, pictures and videos on it and I've only had it for a week. I know it sounds silly to watch a movie on a 3.5 inch screen but when they are documentaries/informative movies and audio is really only necessary it's actually useful.

You guys will enjoy this . I had a good laugh.

Nickboros,
This has been interesting for me. I usually use I tunes to make copies of music for an audiophile friend of mine. I don't know if there is a way of downloading I tunes plus, you can get I tunes Plus songs from I tunes, but I think bit rates are only 320 kbps. This is the highest bit rate I can set in my I tunes for importing discs. I used this to make the best copy fro my friend. However, after your post I checked out my until recently little used Windows Media and saw the lossless option, 470-940 kbps ("mathematically lossless" according to the microsofties. So I did an experiment: I ripped a cd in wma lossless. I then imported it to my I tunes and I tunes made sure I knew it would convert to AAC, but that was the only prompt I had, so I said, "sure." After importing I looked at the info of the song in I tunes and low and behold, the sample rate was only 320 kbps. The song file in Windows Media was 843 kbps, so there was obviously some info lost. (I think) Now I don't know if it noticeable or not or if there is a way of getting I tunes to copy bit for bit, but I just thought I'd pass this on.
Sips

powerwindow,

Thanks for the post. I haven't messed with itunes yet to see if I can convert my Microsoft lossless to Apple lossless. But, if I can't (and it sounds like I can't due to what you are saying happened when you tried) then I probably will not be getting a ipod player. The Zune 80gb player is $249 which is the same price as the ipod classic 80gb. The only reason I wanted the ipod was that there should be many more accesories for the ipod due to its popularity. But, not having lossless music is a dealbreaker for me.

I really don't want to re-rip all of those cd's in itunes so that I can have lossless. I am going to have to mess around with itunes a little bit. I just downloaded it this summer and after it was installed it asked if I wanted to make it my default player and I told it "no". I guess if you say "yes" then it will take all of you windows media player songs and convert them to aac. But, even though I said "no" it took artists starting with A through D and put them in itunes at 128kbps. I am not going to listen to my music at that rate. Luckily those artists are still in Windows Media player as lossless.

- Nick

iTunes is like any other software, you need to tell it what you want in order to get it to do it. To tell iTunes to rip in lossless (ripping a CD or importing is the same thing when convertion is involved), go to "Edit/Preferences/Advanced/Importing" and then select "Apple Lossless". That way, ripping a CD or importing WMV will now use Apple Lossless (same basic algo as WMV except for the copy protection mechanism) and instead of the default 128Kpbs.

I honestly think the Zune player is far better than an iPod and I'm not saying that just because I have one and I'm anti-I everything but it's a very slick MP3/media player. Also if you're considering a Zune player, you can get personalized Zune players right from their website. They will print a design/name on the back of the player at no extra charge; something worth checking out.

EFalardeau,
Awesome! I didn't even notice the drop down menu. I just kept it in AAC and cranked the custom bit rate as high as it would go (320 kbps). I changed it to Apple Lossless codec and I tried my experiment again and sure enough it converted WMA Lossless to Apple Lossless. So Nickboros, I think it's safe to say if you import your album folders into I tunes you won't lose anything as long as you change the I tunes codec to Apple Lossless. However, I noticed an interesting thing: The Kbps of the song in WMA Lossless was 841 kbps and after I tunes imported it, it went to 860 kbps. I'm not sure what's going on there, but it does seem to be in a lossless format so if you do go Ipod you shouldn't have to rerip all of your music.
I like features of both software using the computer, Itunes is nice if you make "backup" copies of your media because there is a way you can print a jewel case insert using album artwork that includes track info, which is nice if you don't have any other softwhere that can do it. Anyway, I learned something once again here on the forum. Thanks and good luck.

EFalardeu,

Thanks for the help converting. I was searching online how to do this and couldn't find it anywhere. I converted all of my music stored in Windows Media Player over to itunes in a lossless format. I also put that NIN the Slip high resolution (1.6 gig) album that I downloaded for free in there as well. I just can't seem to get the cover art and stuff in the file to go in there for some reason so itunes doesn't have any labels for that album for some reason. I guess I'll have to mess with it a little bit. I only have about 20 gigs so far. So all my cd's together I'm estimating will be about 40 to 60gigs (probably closer to 60). So I might go for the 160gig ipod so that I don't run out of space for a long time.

wheelz999,

I've though about getting a Zune but with the popularity of the ipod I think I'm going with the ipod. There will be so much more choices in accessories due to its popularity.

- Nick

Nick,
Itunes does not import the cover art from Windows Media, I ran in to this as well. It will find cover art if you import from the cd to Itunes in the future.

However, there is a way to get the cover art into Itunes: This is what I do, (if anyone has other suggestions please let me know).

Go to your My Music folder.
Highlight an Album Folder.
Go up to Tools
--Folder Options
----View Tab
-----Choose show Hidden Files and Folders
----- Also, "Uncheck" hide protected operating system files

This will allow you to see the Album Artwork files in your album folders. Right click and copy the Large Artwork file. Go to Itunes and highlight all the songs that you want to apply the artwork to. (Highlight first, shift highlight last) Right click--Get info (yes apply to all selected) Right click and paste into artwork square.

That should do it. It's kind of convoluted, but part of the problem is that Windows Media hides those files in the album folders. You can always also go to like Amazon and right click and save album artwork to your desktop and then add it to Itunes the same way as above; however, sometimes the image is not as clear.

Finally, I usually go back and change those folder options, just in case there's the chance that something can happen to those hidden files that you don't want to happen.

I hope this helps,
Tom

powerwindow,

Thanks for the help this seems to be working great. It just takes a while to do it.

- Nick

powerwindow,

There is a much better way of getting the album art. After you have ripped or transfered all of the songs just click advanced and tell it to get cover art. You have to have an itunes account setup to do this but that is it. It may miss some so I just went to amazon.com to get them.

- Nick

Nick,
I have found that sometimes ITunes can't find the cover art. The easiest solution is to go to Amazon.com (or any online cd retaler) and look for the cd. Once you find the cd/description save the album cover as a jpeg. You can then load the album art work corresponding to the song list. I found this on the Apple forum a year ago when I got my ITouch.
Cheers,
Shaun