Neil Posted June 4, 2006 Share Posted June 4, 2006 I think I have hit a snag by Apple been there own worst enemy, I am looking at buying an macbook, however Itunes does not support wma, if it just played it back that would be fine. But reading around I am correct in saying that Itunes does not play back wma's. SO I need a solution converting them to MP3 could work, however my WMA's are encoded at 96Kbs? So they are going to sound nasty at that rate, I think, however 96kbs WMA = CD quality so 192KBs or 128kbs at MP3 should sound alright shouldn't it? Or are there any other solution? The reason why they need to be MP3 or WMA is because I have a creative zen micro... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisgeleven Posted June 4, 2006 Share Posted June 4, 2006 I think I have hit a snag by Apple been there own worst enemy, I am looking at buying an macbook, however Itunes does not support wma, if it just played it back that would be fine. But reading around I am correct in saying that Itunes does not play back wma's. SO I need a solution converting them to MP3 could work, however my WMA's are encoded at 96Kbs? So they are going to sound nasty at that rate, I think, however 96kbs WMA = CD quality so 192KBs or 128kbs at MP3 should sound alright shouldn't it? Or are there any other solution? The reason why they need to be MP3 or WMA is because I have a creative zen micro... Your mistakes: 1) Never transcode a lossy format to a lossy format. It will sound like crap. 2) Never encode using WMA. It is a horrible format. 3) CD Quality is NOT 96kbps. Far from it. 128kbps in any format is the minimum acceptable quality that can be called remotely close to the equivelant of CD Quality. Your best bet is to re-rip your music using MP3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John S. Veteran Posted June 4, 2006 Veteran Share Posted June 4, 2006 I've always ripped my mp3's at 196, but I wouldn't convert wma's, they're not going to sound very good at all. If at all possible, I'd just rerip them as mp3's. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neil Posted June 4, 2006 Author Share Posted June 4, 2006 Well you can thank Itunes for been a peice of ****, they except people to swicth but not supporting wma's is a great idea.... Also I dont have the CD's for some of music whcih means re downlaoding it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xstream Posted June 4, 2006 Share Posted June 4, 2006 you could get the Media player from Microsoft for Mac Os? http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsme...load/mac71.aspx or the VLC player http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John S. Veteran Posted June 5, 2006 Veteran Share Posted June 5, 2006 VLC is actually pretty good, not sure if it will play wmv's or not, I've never had any. Windows Media Player for OS X isn't worth the trouble. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt T Posted June 6, 2006 Share Posted June 6, 2006 Well you can thank Itunes for been a peice of ****, they except people to swicth but not supporting wma's is a great idea....Windows Media Player doesn't support MOV or AAC-encoded audio files; does that make it **** too? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chad Posted June 7, 2006 Share Posted June 7, 2006 Quicktime will play WMA files with this plugin http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsme...components.mspx I ran across plugin that allows WMA in iTunes, but for the life of me, I can't find it again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Event Posted June 7, 2006 Share Posted June 7, 2006 Quicktime will play WMA files with this plugin http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsme...components.mspx I ran across plugin that allows WMA in iTunes, but for the life of me, I can't find it again. thats PPC only... :cry: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
einsteinbqat Posted June 7, 2006 Share Posted June 7, 2006 ^ Nah, There a beta out the supports Mac Intel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fukachu Posted June 7, 2006 Share Posted June 7, 2006 Well you can thank Itunes for been a peice of ****, they except people to swicth but not supporting wma's is a great idea.... Also I dont have the CD's for some of music whcih means re downlaoding it. First of all, Apple isn't meant to be considering people who pirate their music, so you should own it. now if you were talking aout drm'd stuff thats different even when i was a windows user i stayed well clear of WMA, it just isn't a good format and encoding at 96kbs is pretty low.. even for WMA. you should have higher quality versions of your music anyway. remember to set the settings higher then 128 when you rip in itunes! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
medium_pimpin Posted June 7, 2006 Share Posted June 7, 2006 Well you can thank Itunes for been a peice of ****, they except people to swicth but not supporting wma's is a great idea.... Also I dont have the CD's for some of music whcih means re downlaoding it. I've never seen a place where you could download music at 96kb. Unless it's ILLEGAL music..... BTW, at that rate, why not just have all your music saved as midi files? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BajiRav Posted June 7, 2006 Share Posted June 7, 2006 Windows Media Player doesn't support MOV or AAC-encoded audio files; does that make it **** too? atleast WMP can play aac files with appropriate plugins (I use tag support), iTunes is simply not extensible (QT is but iTunes is not) it won't go beyond its known filetypes. and I strongly disagree that WMA is crappy format, it is as good as AAC if not better. 96 Kbps WMA is what I encoded few of my CDs and they sound as good as the source. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SweWiLLiE Posted June 7, 2006 Share Posted June 7, 2006 and I strongly disagree that WMA is crappy format, it is as good as AAC if not better. 96 Kbps WMA is what I encoded few of my CDs and they sound as good as the source. Uhm, no. WMA is to be avoided at all times. Besides the crappy quality, it uses more CPU to decode and will drain your battery quicker on your mp3player. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joshpo Posted June 7, 2006 Share Posted June 7, 2006 WMA at 96kbps? Ew. Re-rip what you can into mp3 using lame, use iTunes to convert the wma into mp3 so you can add them to your library. They will sound like crap (lossy to lossy compression) but at least you can have them in your iTunes library until you get new mp3 versions of everything. I just don't understand why anyone would use proprietary formats of any kind. Use mp3. Every device and software on earth plays it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mathachew Veteran Posted June 7, 2006 Veteran Share Posted June 7, 2006 OGG > WMA > MP3 OGG has rich sounds and is easily comparable at 96kbps to a 128 or 160 kbps MP3. However, I do not use OGG for the same reason I do not use MP3: neither are a gapless format. A good chunk of my music is of live perfomances and I simply cannot stand hearing gaps between a crowd's applause or when one song leads into another (which happens on more than just live music). WMAs are gapless and do the job perfectly. Unfortunately, to play the music in iTunes, you are forced to encode to one of the playable formats and will have poor sounding music. Why on earth your music is 96kbps is beyond me. CD quality for WMA is 192kbps; check out the ripping options in WMP. Going from WMA 192kbps to MP3 160kbps even suffers, but I had to do it in order to play my music on my shuffle. VLC is probably your best bet. It's a great program. http://www.videolan.org/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SweWiLLiE Posted June 7, 2006 Share Posted June 7, 2006 I would say more like: flac > mpc > ogg > mp3 > aac > wma Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.Neo Posted June 7, 2006 Share Posted June 7, 2006 I just don't understand why anyone would use proprietary formats of any kind. Use mp3. Every device and software on earth plays it. Amen to that. I rip everything in 192 Kbs VBR (Highest quality) MP3 format. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neil Posted June 7, 2006 Author Share Posted June 7, 2006 Okay firstly I do not pirate music, all I wanted was a easy to migrate all my music to Mac without having to re rip it again, I have a lot of CD's and that is going to take a long time. Thank you for helping those posted revelvent stuff, and it is bit late now to complain that WMA is crap format, but it is not it did what I want and obviously you did not read my post clearly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chad Posted June 7, 2006 Share Posted June 7, 2006 ^ Nah, There a beta out the supports Mac Intel. Yup (Y) atleast WMP can play aac files with appropriate plugins (I use tag support), iTunes is simply not extensible (QT is but iTunes is not) it won't go beyond its known filetypes. and I strongly disagree that WMA is crappy format, it is as good as AAC if not better. 96 Kbps WMA is what I encoded few of my CDs and they sound as good as the source. Oh man. iTunes is extensible through QT, as it uses the QT player to play the media. By adding plugins to QT, you enable iTunes to play that format. The Ogg Vorbis plug-in, for example http://www.illadvised.com/~jordy/ Okay firstly I do not pirate music, all I wanted was a easy to migrate all my music to Mac without having to re rip it again, I have a lot of CD's and that is going to take a long time. Thank you for helping those posted revelvent stuff, and it is bit late now to complain that WMA is crap format, but it is not it did what I want and obviously you did not read my post clearly. You DID say you'd have to re-download the music because you don't have the discs.... WMA is just NOT a good format, but I hope you do find something that works for you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neil Posted June 7, 2006 Author Share Posted June 7, 2006 Well my plan is just to re-rip them onto my new macbook, when it comes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
einsteinbqat Posted June 7, 2006 Share Posted June 7, 2006 ^ Nah, There a beta out the supports Mac Intel. Yup (Y) OMG! I just can't imagine I made so many typos in such a short sentence! Guess I was to lazy to re-read myself! :blush: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shodan Posted June 8, 2006 Share Posted June 8, 2006 Why don't you download iTunes for Windows? It will let you re-encode all your WMA files in AAC format, so you'll be able to transfer them to iTunes on Mac..... :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Decryptor Veteran Posted June 8, 2006 Veteran Share Posted June 8, 2006 ... Oh man. iTunes is extensible through QT, as it uses the QT player to play the media. By adding plugins to QT, you enable iTunes to play that format. The Ogg Vorbis plug-in, for example http://www.illadvised.com/~jordy/ ... No man, that's too old, there are official components now, http://www.xiph.org/quicktime/ They can handle Theora, Vorbis, FLAC and Speex in any app that uses QuickTime (e.g. iTunes) Due to the way iTunes is written though, it doesn't see Vorbis (FLAC, Speex, ETC.) files as audio, it sees them as QuickTime movies, just without the video stream. and yeah, Flip4Mac should allow iTunes to read WMA files, and it might allow you to "transcode" them to a better format, like AAC (or a older format like MP3 if you want) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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