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

[saratoga]

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.

Don't use a 360. Use an Xbox 1 running XBMC. It supports ALAC, thus you won't need to convert anything.

[Veej007]

this is seems like an appropriate time to reiterate my interest in that quicktime flac component.

or, you know, decent flac support on osx at all (max only works under tiger, which i can't use, and there's still no sane playback+tagging option). what's the point of open source if it ends up just as pragmatically limited as the proprietary options?

sorry i can't help make it happen; i don't know how to write this sort of thing, i'm just a lowly power user.

(bitching session over.)

[Nick E]

this is seems like an appropriate time to reiterate my interest in that quicktime flac component.

The Xiph one? Here's the link for anyone who might find that useful:

http://www.xiph.org/quicktime/

What's new in this release? Intel Mac compatibility (finally!), FLAC decoder, fresh (and still warm!) Theora decoder and a number of bug fixes and other smaller changes - see the release notes for details.

But I can't recall trying it with FLAC as such, though I did try a FLAC in an OGG container with it, and that seemed fine. I usually just use VLC for more (currently) unusual formats, but I'm more of an MP3 user. (FLAC is my standard format for archiving, but I don't generally listen to it: I encode to MP3 for my portable player.)

or, you know, decent flac support on osx at all (max only works under tiger, which i can't use, and there's still no sane playback+tagging option).

I hadn't noticed that Stephen's program was either indecent or insane, and I'm very grateful to him for working on it and providing it free of charge to the community, but there you go. Again, I'll give the link for the benefit of anyone on OS X who hasn't heard of it before but who might find it useful. I use it a lot and would heartily recommend it to anyone:

http://www.sbooth.org/Max/

Anyone stopping by there will also find Tag, "a metadata editor for FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, Monkey's Audio and WavPack files", which I've used and would also recommend and Vincent Spader's Cog, which is a lightweight open-source audio player for OS X (haven't tried Cog yet myself).

what's the point of open source if it ends up just as pragmatically limited as the proprietary options?

What's the "point" of open source? Well, that depends on whom you ask. According to Richard Stallman, the "point" would be that it respects a number of "freedoms":

http://www.gnu.org/events/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt

He says he would use it even if it were very much worse than "non-free" code purely for that reason. It has nothing to do with "pragmatism" in his book, and many would agree. But you'd get a rather different account from, for example, Eric Raymond.

But I'm not sure what bearing this has on the OP's question - or on the needs of people who might be visiting this thread, having read the title, to find out more about the audio options in iTunes and WMP, and secondarily, OS X and Windows. These are not of course "free" platforms in Stallman's sense, even if parts of OS X's kernel are open source.

Anyway, a couple more links - cover art was touched on earlier, and people might like to know that the storage set-up for iTunes has changed radically with the integration of coverflow. Images downloaded from the iTunes Store are no longer stored in the ID3 tags but in a database, which solves some problems and makes some new ones:

http://theubergeeks.net/2006/09/13/new-album-art/

http://decaffeinated.org/archives/2006/09/...now_i_regret_it