i-tunes down loads

Posted by: edsmiata

i-tunes down loads - 01/08/2005 12:31

i tried uploading some songs i downloaded (!) from i-tunes and received a message something to the effect that the format is not regonizable....

has anybody done this and if so how would i go about doing it?

thanks,

Ed
Posted by: peter

Re: i-tunes down loads - 01/08/2005 12:33

Quote:
i tried uploading some songs i downloaded (!) from i-tunes and received a message something to the effect that the format is not regonizable...

Those songs are not compatible with the Empeg, or indeed with any non-Apple product.

The best you can do is record them to CD, then rip the CD in the normal way. You do lose quality doing this, though.

Peter
Posted by: JBjorgen

Re: i-tunes down loads - 01/08/2005 12:49

Quote:
The best you can do

buzz....wrong answer. Check out JHymn.
Posted by: peter

Re: i-tunes down loads - 01/08/2005 12:54

Unless Hymn has got a lot cleverer recently, it still leaves the file as AAC. You can't get it to play on the Empeg without transcoding -- introducing the same quality loss as burning and re-ripping it.

Peter
Posted by: JBjorgen

Re: i-tunes down loads - 01/08/2005 13:06

It has gotten cleverer! If you have LAME installed, it will transcode your de-drm'ed files to mp3.

note: hymn hasn't been updated for some time now, and will no longer remove DRM with the latest iTunes store. The JHymn developer took the torch and all new development is included in there.
Posted by: Foz

Re: i-tunes down loads - 01/08/2005 13:43

Yes but you are still transcoding... and losing quality.

-- Gary F.
Posted by: tfabris

Re: i-tunes down loads - 01/08/2005 14:10

I've just updated the FAQ Entry about the empeg's supported file types to include specific mention of iTunes and the Hymn project. Thanks.
Posted by: JBjorgen

Re: i-tunes down loads - 01/08/2005 14:16

Quote:
Yes but you are still transcoding... and losing quality.

No doubt. Probably just as much as if you ripped from a CD. It just saves you a CD and some time. I buy from AllOfMP3.com if I can, and only turn to iTunes + transcode as a last resort.
Posted by: Roger

Re: i-tunes down loads - 01/08/2005 14:29

Quote:
Probably just as much as if you ripped from a CD.


Probably just as much as if you burnt the AAC to a CD, and then ripped that as MP3.

(Just to clarify that we're not talking about ripping an original CD here)
Posted by: Mataglap

Re: i-tunes down loads - 01/08/2005 17:09

If I remember correctly, iTunes songs are m4p, Apple-DRM'ed AAC encoded files. Once the DRM stuff is removed, they are normally m4a, AAC encoded files in the MPEG 4 (Audio) containers.

These days we now have to deal with both the encoded data and the container. (Which is actually better than the old days, which leads to the whole mp3 tagging problem.) The encoded data uses a specified codec. The container includes the compressed data and meta information like tags. Some codecs include a mechanism for meta information like FLAC, others don't like mp3.

Ogg, for example is actually a container, and Vorbis is the codec, hence mentions of Ogg Vorbis. The original vision for the Ogg container format was much grander, with Theora as a video codec as well as alernate audio codecs like Speex and FLAC. Occasionally you run across mention of Ogg FLAC which is using the FLAC codec inside of an Ogg container, which isn't necessary but might be useful in some circumstances.

Windows has a real problem with the same extention being used for multiple kinds of data, and the slow progress (and the Ogg project not providing any practical means to have the operating system deal with different types of payloads) and basically lack of adoption meant that ".ogg" was generally assumed to mean only Vorbis payloads.

--Nathan