Hi. I've ripped (to m4a) and tagged a few albums with foobar2000 and transfered them to my iPod with dBpowerAmp and have had no problems. I just downloaded iTunes for windows and to my surprise it doesn't not recognise my files as being aac at all. The files don't play and there is no tag information. I thought foobar was compatible with iTunes ... am I missing something here???

iTunes has a bug that it won't load mp4 files that have zero size for first frame. Foo_faac and faac.exe on my page are changed in a way that circumvents this problem, next version of Nero encoder will address the issue too. You'll need new foo_mp4 from my page too to play these new files gaplessly.

ok so I'll have to rip the albums again then? there is no way to fix the tracks? also how recent is that foo_faac? cause i have one thats less than a month old ... i guess too old by foobar standards

OK so i downloaded the latest foobar2000 "special installer" 0.7.1 and the latest foo_aac.zip and foo_mp4.zip (oct 17). Then i reripped an album to AAC (m4a) and the same thing happend. So then i renamed the files to mp4 and boom! they played BUT no tags So i tried renaming my older m4a's and they played fine as well. So I dont think the problem was the silent first frame as you suggested. Its pretty obvious that iTunes doesn't like the m4a extension unless it created the file. So my question is...

Are foobar2000's mp4/m4a tags supposed to be compatible with iTunes for windows? cause I was pretty sure I read that they were for iTunes on the Mac.

No, the problem is that iTunes doesn't allow any frame duration different from 1024 in .m4a files, this is their bug. Our bug was that we wrote a 0 duration frame, which is not allowed. This doesn't stop us from writing frame durations different from 1024. And with a duration other than 1024, .m4a files won't play on iTunes, until they fix this bug.

Menno

OK so this is a "problem" with iTunes? Or did they just decided to implement part of the AAC/m4a standard? Also How does the frame size affect the tags? Aren't independent of each other? I thought the tags were at the begining of the file before the actual music data.

So let me ask this. Is there a way to create AAC/m4a/mp4 files with foobar2000(or other PC encoders) that are compatible with iTunes? Cause if there isn't I don't really see a future for AAC/mp4 on the PC. Y can't all the AAC/mp4 vendors get their shit together!?!?!? Come on!! If mp3 was this hard to get working when it first started out I can guarantee we'd still be listening to mix tapes on our walkmans instead of carying around our whole music collection on our iPods!!

iTunes bugs prevent m4a from loading so iTunes don't get any tag. If you rename the file to .mp4 iTunes will pass it to Quicktime and does not read tag at all.

If you want to make your current AAC file compatible with iTunes see this thread:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....howtopic=14115&
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....howtopic=14447&

Off topic:
Case,
Please read this thread and share some idea. (about mp4 tagging bug in foorbar)
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....howtopic=14459&

Well I asked apple to see if they are working on this.

http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?50@...jZg.6@.599b8b0b

They are...

Menno

You say this so confidently How do you get this type of information ??? I only ask cause I'm wondering if you know anything about gapless mp4/m4a playback on the iPod? I mean if they are making iTunes read gapless mp4/m4a files it would make sense they would update the iPod software aswell. There have been rumors this is coming.

I meant that they are fixing their bug with reading of Nero files. This is a bug of theirs and I reported it to one of their developers, he told me that it would be fixed.

I don't know what the Apple gapless plans are.

Menno

Menno, will this be an update to Itunes 4.1.X? I have been searching around the Apple site and I see nothing related to this. You did say they are working on a fix (and other things I would assume).

Should we be waiting for a new version / update to correct these issues?

They told me they would fix it, so I guess, yes, wait for an update.

Menno

Menno, have you heard back from apple concerning this? I'm wondering why they may make the fix.