Finding a lossless format for itunes and windows media player Options

[vetinry]

Good morning

I am having a very frustrating time trying to find a suitable audio format that I can use in my home network and hope that someone may have a solution.

As an ipod user, I ripped my entire CD collection (500 ish) to the apple lossless (ALAC) format using EAC and itunes encode. I use my ipod in the car as a CD changer, and I purchased a couple of Slim Devices Squeezebox 2's to stream music in the house.

SQ is more important than file size and this is why I chose a lossless format.

I have now recently built myself a Home Theatre PC running Windows Media Center - its main purpose is to house all of my media files (TV, audio and pictures) in one place. It is connected to the screen in the kitchen, and I am going to buy an Xbox 360 to act as media center extender in the lounge. Since the Xbox will only be able to retrieve media files through Windows Media Center, I would like to find a format that will allow me to do this, and therefore not need a separate squeezebox.

I have read a little about the incompatability between itunes and WMP, but it seems that both can play WAV flies, which although disc space hungry, would be acceptable.

This is where the problem starts - I've tried ripping WAV files in iTunes, in WMP, and in EAC but there doesn't appear to be consistency between the folder types.

The ability to capture Album artwork etc through WMP is appealing, particularly when using media center, but although using these different methods is recognised by the different programmes, the file structures which are so important for searching disappear.

Is there a method of ripping WAV files so that they can be viewed in correct folder structures by both itunes and windows media player?

Any help as always would be gratefully received.

Best wishes

Steve

[vetinry]

Thanks

I think I'm getting the gist of what you're saying now.

Will have to have a bit of a think

Best wishes

Steve

[John Lockwood]

Thanks

I think I'm getting the gist of what you're saying now.

Will have to have a bit of a think

Best wishes

Steve

I too also wanted to share my music between iTunes (to provide iPod and Mac compatibility) and WMP (to provide MCE 2005 compatibility). I also wanted to go further and include compatibility with the Roku SoundBridge M2000 and future proof it so that if/when I get a Sonos Zone Player that is also supported.

Initially I had thought AIFF was the way to go since it is fully support by iTunes, iPod, SoundBridge and Sonos Zone Player. I also knew that WMP could play it. Unfortunately I then discovered that WMP while it has a built-in codec to play AIFF does not have the ability to read iTunes tags for AIFF files, nor is there any plugin for WMP (currently) to address this. I had instantly discounted WAV as it does not support tags and embedded album art (for iTunes and iPod).

I then considered AAC and proved it would work with everything (by using a plugin for WMP to read the tags and an AAC codec) but this was a lossey format.

More recently the SoundBridge firmware was upgraded and FireFly server released which meant the SoundBridge could now play Apple Lossless (iTunes, iPod and Sonos Zone Player already supported Apple Loessless). As Apple Lossless uses the same MPEG4 file format and tag format as AAC this meant WMP could already read the tags for Apple Lossless via the same plugin. This drove me to look for a way to get the final missing piece an Apple Lossless codec for WMP.

As has been mentioned in this thread, in theory ffmpeg is supposed to now support ALAC (Apple Lossless) but it never worked for me. I then started googling like mad to find ALAC solutions for Windows, other than a reference to ffmpeg and solutions for winamp and foobar (which were of no use to getting it working in WMP and MCE) I eventually came across mention of the BASS audio library for Windows (see http://www.un4seen.com/bass.html ). This library has modules available for various audio formats including ALAC and AAC and the source code for those particular modules is freely available. BASS does not itself integrate with WMP and I am not a Windows programmer so I was not quite there yet. I then found another developer had already taken the BASS library and an MP3 plugin and wrapped it all together as a directshow filter WHICH WORKS IN WMP! Wow! I thought, if only I could get him to do the same thing by taking the BASS library and the source for the BASS ALAC module and wrap that together as a directshow filter!

Ta da!

He did indeed manage to do this for me and after he fixed a small bug I now have ALL my iTunes library in Apple Lossless format and I can play it in iTunes, WMP, MCE 2005, SoftSqueeze (via SlimServer), Roku SoundBridge (via Firefly server) and if I had them it would also be possible with an iPod, SlimDevices Squeezebox (via SlimServer), Sonos Zone Player, EVEN AN XBOX 360 ACTING AS A MEDIA EXTENDER (via MCE 2005).

In other-words, I have achieved the impossible and I have a universal lossless music format supported by EVERYTHING all linked to single copies of each track.

I have even got artwork working in both iTunes and WMP and MCE (although that requires some manual intervention).

I even asked Apple to add support for the "Album Artist" tag to make it easier to integrate with WMP and they added that in iTunes 7. (This works thanks to SoftPointer's Tag Extender Plugin for WMP, currently WMPTSE a very similar plugin is having problems reading iTunes tags.)

Note: I use iTunes to rip CDs and I tell WMP to not copy or move or change the files but to merely add them to its library. As a result iTunes and WMP share the same single copies of files.