Long-time reader, first-time poster, blah blah blah, and if I'm the millionth person to ask this, I'm sorry. I tried to find my own answers, and got confused, so please don't hit me...

Anyway, here's the thing - I'm ripping my CD's into iTunes (AAC, 192kbps) solely for my iPod, and also into Monkey's Audio for my fb2k, which means that every CD is on my machine twice (thank the gods for 200gb H/D's). This has to be redundant. What I'd like to do would be to rip to M/A, and them convert to AAC, as needed, to dump into iTunes for transfer to the iPod. I've tried converting M/A files to AAC, but iTunes wouldn't recognise it. I thought foo-pod would do it, but it just locks up on me.

I don't want to blather on about failed attempts, so I'm just gonna play dumb and ask what I'm missing here. There's gotta be a way to do this.

I also hope I've posted this in the right spot.

Try Otto42's iTunesEncode. Do a search on the forums and it should pop up. You can use it as a Command Line Encoder for fb2k's Diskwriter/Converter.

How did you try converting? Try using the nero AAC encoder, with foobar or MAREO / WACK (?)

One of those solutions should work.

This one I don't know of - thanks!


I've tried dbPowerAMP's Music Converter, I've tried Nero (not exactly sure which plug-in I've got, but it said 'AAC' in big letters on the side) , and I've tried some home-brewed thing a friend gave me.

- edit - maybe I should mention that I don't have to have iTunes, if there's a way around using it as the iPod interface.

Use the monkeyaudio frontend to decompress to wav, and then use whatever program you want to encode to aac; afterwards, you can retag using any program you like.

Foobar2000 special (www.foobar.org) can also do all of this for you (encoding and tagging)

Peace,
Tristan.

iTunes has the nicest AAC encoder

How are you ripping from CD?

If you are using EAC you could use REACT. This will allow you to rip to Monkey's Audio and M4A at the same time. If you are ripping to tracks in both situations them you may prefer MAREO.

If you are a foobar user you may be aware that support for Monkey's Audio in the latest 0.9 may be limited. There is an unsupported component, but the basic upshot is that the developers have little faith in the format, and recommend another. I personally moved from Monkey's Audio to WavPack a while ago.

I would recommend iTunesEncode also, to create the M4A files. You can either do this with foobar's Diskwriter/Conveter and your Monkey's Audio files, or as part of the REACT ripping process. iTunesEncode is basically a command line interface to iTunes (it will pop up iTunes when encoding).

Edit: On rereading I now see/think that you want to rip to Monkey's Audio and only encode to M4A when required. In this case forget my ramblings about REACT and MAREO; I would definately go for foobar's Diskwriter/Converter with iTunesEncode... just as Mono said originally . The iTunesEncode readme includes the command line to use with foobar.

I've been using dMC's ripper, but I want to give EAC a try (I'm still trying to find out what does what well, and what will work for my setup).

Let me try re-phrasing the question - I've got a butt-load of CD's that I want to rip onto my drive for use on my computer and my iPod, using a lossless codec. I don't have a preference as to which codec(s) I use, as long as one of them will work w/my 'Pod. I'm not allergic to switching from fb2k to another player, either, if needed. I'd rather not have to re-rip to another format if I don't have to, but after reading Synthetic's comment on M/A above (and a probable H/D re-format on the horizon...), starting over would be acceptable. My current method does work, but seems redundant (plus chews up more H/D space).

What would you guys do?

I would use EAC with REACT/MAREO to rip to M4A (using iTunesEncode) and WavPack simultaneously.

Just to confuse matters, I would rip to a WavPack image with cuesheet. So I would need REACT.

I would rip to Wavpack and store them on your harddrive, then encode to AAC as required (if harddrive space is limited). If you have the hard drive space to store both AAC and Wavpack, do that. For the conversion I would use Foobar2000 armed with the relevant plugin (see above).

I have a portable MP3 player but I rip to Wavpack for storage on my hard drive. I have a temporary MP3 folder with my latest rips and any stuff I listen to regularly in for quick and easy transfer. I regularly clear this folder out, sometimes even completely delete them all for a new rotation of music that I can quickly transfer to my portable.

i am doing the same thing (albeit with flac as my lossless format and lame mp3 as my itunes format) and have found that foobar is by far the best option.

rip to flac/monkey's first one disc at a time, and then you can do a batch convert to mp3/aac using foobar (overnight or while you're at work or whatever)

foobar can be a bitch to set up properly, but luckily for poor itunes sods like us, all we need to properly configure is a single profile in the diskwriter section of the preferences. i never use foobar for playback or tagging or anything else, just conversion. it's the only program i've found that will let you transcode from lossless to lossy while retaining tag data (dbpoweramp will do it, but they charge extra to enable the mp3 option)

I do the same thing, but I use FLAC.

foobar should handle the conversion beautifully.

And just for curiosity... why not LAME instead of AAC if it is just temporary when-required kind of thing? It should be easier to setup than iTunesEncode...

OK, this is the kind of advise I was hoping for - thanks, people!


Basically 'cause it's all I know, right now - I've only been using my computer for music for a couple of years, and it wasn't until I got my iPod last year that I began sweating details. I did some on-line research and decided on M/A (via dMC and fb2k) for my 'puter and AAC (via iTunes) for my 'pod. Recently, since I have a little too much time on my hands, I began wondering if there was a better way...

I have a couple of questions about EAC. I went to the site to download, and there are two versions - with and without a CDRDAO package. What's a CDRDAO package? Also, there are D/L's for an installer and a ZIP. I need both, right? (I couldn't find any info on the site explaining what they actually were)

I still think you should use MP3 instead of AAC, but nevermind.

CDRDAO is a library used to burn CDs for people who want to burn Audio CDs with EAC and their drive is not supported by EAC.

There are people that want tu use EAC to burn because it supports write offsets. If you are going to be listening to music on your computer and/or do not know what offsets are, don't worry. You will not miss a thing.

You need either the installer or the ZIP.

I recommend the ZIP. Unzip it to any folder you like. Put your codecs there and off you go.

There are plenty of setup guides available on this forum. Search a little.

If there's trouble, then ask again.

Why? I'm not trying to be a snot, here - I honestly am curious. As I said above, I did some research, and AAC sounded like it would give a better quality play-back. I know of LAME, but have not used it (yet - I am going to give it a try...).

Rip with iTunes directly to ALAC (Apple's Lossless Encoder, available in iTunes) and iTunes should automatically convert the songs to AAC (whatever bitrate you set in the preferences as default) when you sync with the iPod.

I don't think foobar2000 can play ALAC files though...

Foobar can play ALAC with the ALAC plugin.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=40971

You must not have tried very hard
dBpowerAMP can even rip & encode to 2+ formats at the same time (multi encoder is in the beta test forum on the dbpoweramp site), and refer to codec central for monkeys audio and aac/mp4/m4a plugins and stuff
http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm

foobar is also good for batch encoding.... the rest of the options seem to get steadily more difficult (scripting) for me, dBpowerAMP is by far the easiest, and prettiest, option

This sounds good (I already have all that I need), except for one thing - I don't understand how iTunes (v6.0.1.3) converts from ALAC to AAC automatically. I tried this with a single file, and it ended up on the iPod as a ALAC file. I saw that right-clicking on a file in iTunes will offer to convert to ALAC, but nowhere could I find the ALAC-to-AAC conversion. What did I miss?

OK, I really hate to sound stupid here, but I've got no choice - I've got it, but what/where do I put it (as in, how do I make it work)?

...sorry for the double-post...

whenever you like, you just need to point to it the cd ripper, as if it where LAME.exe, or whatever. It would call itunes.

You didn't miss anything. The automatic conversion feature is only available for iPod Shuffles and nothing else. You will have to manually convert the files from ALC to AAC in iTunes.

Gosh, I don't know how people get very much lossless music on their drives. If my collection were all FLAC or ALC, it would require over 500GB - we getting near terabyte territory here, and my total space (including backup) is only 320GB. I presently devote about 75GB to my smallish collection of 16,000 songs or so.

Since I own most all of the music on CD, I will perhaps re-rip critical music again in the future. Frankly, most of it isn't worth the fuss!

I currently have 2 external 250GB HDs for my collection, all FLAC all from pressed CDs, and will soon have to get new drives. So yes, lossless can take up alot of room but its worth it to perfectly preserver your collection and have the option to transcode to any format in the future.

My name is Mud, check your PM

After spending the week trying stuff mentioned above (again, thanks for the input!), I've settled on EAC/FLAC and foo_pod - it's working fine (dunno why it was picking on me before), except for not being able to transcode on the fly. If anyone has suggestions about that, follow me to the foo_pod thread...