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

[ShinKen]

Thanks to this forum and this thread, I was able to get my ALAC files to play in Windows MCE and my xbox360. Thanks again!

[Tuono]

Thanks to this forum and this thread, I was able to get my ALAC files to play in Windows MCE and my xbox360. Thanks again!

I second that, thanks a lot to the great people here for all your efforts! At last I can use ALAC both on my iPod and my Vista Media Center PC.

However, it seems to be a small issue left to solve. I can't play the audio files using my Xbox 360 elite as a Media Center Extender. It will immidiately hang when trying to play the ALAC file. Other (supported) media formats works just fine. I thought the Media Center Extender just got a decoded and uncompressed stream from the PC, but apparently it doesn't. Any hints would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

--
/Tuono

[John Lockwood]

Thanks to this forum and this thread, I was able to get my ALAC files to play in Windows MCE and my xbox360. Thanks again!

I second that, thanks a lot to the great people here for all your efforts! At last I can use ALAC both on my iPod and my Vista Media Center PC.

However, it seems to be a small issue left to solve. I can't play the audio files using my Xbox 360 elite as a Media Center Extender. It will immidiately hang when trying to play the ALAC file. Other (supported) media formats works just fine. I thought the Media Center Extender just got a decoded and uncompressed stream from the PC, but apparently it doesn't. Any hints would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

--
/Tuono

I don't have an XBox 360 so I have not tried this. There was an earlier report from someone who said it worked for him but that was before the Elite model shipped and more importantly before the Spring update to the XBox 360 software. It is knowing Microsoft quite possible that one of their updates broke this. I do know that they did remove the paragraph from the webpage on their site that said this should work (i.e. any audio format).

[Andy2000]

All,

I have the same problem. Thanks to John's efforts I can play ALAC using WMP on Vista Ultimate, but I cannot get ALAC to play via an XBOX 360 Elite.

My holy grail is to get a single lossless compression format working that can be used by:

• iTunes/iPod where iTunes is the "master source" and is used to rip CDs and will correctly display artwork
• Windows Media Player via XBOX 360 media extender
• SONOS

If anyone discovers how to get the XBOX bit working then, I'd really like to hear from you!

Andy

[John Lockwood]

All,

I have the same problem. Thanks to John's efforts I can play ALAC using WMP on Vista Ultimate, but I cannot get ALAC to play via an XBOX 360 Elite.

My holy grail is to get a single lossless compression format working that can be used by:

• iTunes/iPod where iTunes is the "master source" and is used to rip CDs and will correctly display artwork
• Windows Media Player via XBOX 360 media extender
• SONOS

If anyone discovers how to get the XBOX bit working then, I'd really like to hear from you!

Andy

It is certainly possible to do the first and third entries in your list, but it looks like as I said that Microsoft have broken the ability to do the second one. ShinKen's reply to this thread implies it did work for him (at that time), and the following from Microsoft's website implies it also used to work but no longer does.

The Microsoft website had a page saying -

Audio formats
• Windows Media Audio (WMA) Standard
• WMA Pro
• WMA Lossless
• MP3
• Other formats for which a DirectShow decoder is installed and registered on the PC

The same page now says just

Audio formats
• Windows Media Audio (WMA) Standard
• WMA Pro
• WMA Lossless
• MP3

See this link for an archived copy of the first version
http://web.archive.org/web/20070118163428/...der/mcefaq.mspx

and this for the current version
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/mediace...der/mcefaq.mspx

So I am afraid it looks like it is all Microsoft's fault. If this is true as appears to be the case then the only option for the Xbox 360 to play the music is not do it via the Extender method but instead the streaming method from a uPnP server e.g. TVersity which does work (such servers will automatically transcode the format on the fly). This does work with the current Xbox 360 software.

Note: The Sonos ZonePlayers, Roku SoundBridges, and SlimDevices SqueezeBox all support ALAC.

[grommet]

Extenders can stream uncompressed PCM audio. So, if the host Media Center system can play/decode the song (via filter), the Extender UI can still play it via streamed PCM... I don't think this function was removed. Maybe Microsoft just doesn't want to encourage it's use, since other formats don't have direct library/metadata support.