Can you play itunes purchased AAC files on A Portable CD Player that supports AAC

trunksfujita · Mar 13, 2004

Can you play itunes purchased AAC files(music) on A Portable CD Player that supports AAC,, i found a few portable cd players that play AAC files. i was planning to save a little money. instead of buying an Ipod to stream music to my home Stereo for $300, i could use a portable CD player that plays AAC and connect it to my home Stereo for $80.

will it play. can anyone help me.?

Horrortaxi · Mar 13, 2004

If you are going to burn them to a CD anyway, why not burn as an audio CD and play them in any CD player?

Not sure if the DRM would interfere with playing them as AAC.

encro · Mar 13, 2004

It won't play the songs on the iTMS because of the Fairplay DRM used to protect the tracks.

You can play standard AAC encodes though (ie. The CD's you rip yourself).

In short files that end in .m4a or .m4b will play but .m4p will not. Im not sure if you have to change the extension to .aac or .mp4 to get them to play though.

P.S. You can convert the iTMS .m4p files to .mp3 or .m4a and they should work.

EDIT: Added P.S. because sometimes I don't point out some things that I thought was common knowledge, but I was wrong.

Sparky's · Mar 14, 2004

trunks, I have burned every itunes song and album I have downloaded to audio CD and they all play just fine in my car CD player, on my portable, and in my sons' Boom Box. How are you burning them? All my tunes are .m4p and I have a little app called "Wire Tap" that captures streaming audio as it's played and saves to .aiff format. Don't tell me the latest version of iTunes saves to a different format.
and just a little FYI hears an article about the formats:
http://www.apple.com/itunes/encode.html
and this one:
http://www.apple.com/itunes/burn.html

wordmunger · Mar 14, 2004

Horrortaxi said:
If you are going to burn them to a CD anyway, why not burn as an audio CD and play them in any CD player?

Not sure if the DRM would interfere with playing them as AAC.

The reason would be to fit more songs on a CD. This is one of the things that is keeping me from buying more songs on ITMS. If I can only fit 20 or so ITMS songs on a CD, why not just buy a regular CD? Burned CDs don't look as good on my bookshelf--but if I could have fewer of them, that wouldn't matter as much.

encro · Mar 14, 2004

Sparky's said:
trunks, I have burned every itunes song and album I have downloaded to audio CD and they all play just fine in my car CD player, on my portable, and in my sons' Boom Box. How are you burning them? All my tunes are .m4p and I have a little app called "Wire Tap" that captures streaming audio as it's played and saves to .aiff format. Don't tell me the latest version of iTunes saves to a different format.
and just a little FYI hears an article about the formats:
http://www.apple.com/itunes/encode.html
and this one:
http://www.apple.com/itunes/burn.html

Converting iTMS tracks work fine in conversion to a Audio CD but Trunks is referring to a AAC Data CD which will be interpreted differently.

What you are using WireTap for can be done in iTunes from the Advanced Menu ->Convert selection to [n] (Where [n] is your current Preferences Import using... setting)

Sparky's · Mar 14, 2004

So I would think that if the technology is far out advancing the players then maybe there are a few of them that can't play AAC format. (help me here, I'm trying to learn also) I have withheld burning mp3 formats to CD for the very same reason. Just not sure If all the above listed players could handle them. My concern is "Road tunes" I do a lot of traveling and enjoy putting together personal CDs to listen to while driving. I have a Blaupunkt CD player with a 6 CD cartridge player so I get about 10 hrs of tunes I can manage from the front seat via a remote. But being able to put all 10 hrs on one CD would be nice.

PS. encro, can iTunes capture audio from a site that only allows streaming audio? For instance the Moody Blues 30th aniversay of "Dark side of the Moon" web site plays the entire album song list but does not allow downloading. all I do is hit record and play the song list and it records in aiff. format to my desktop. (not saying that I did that though) I do repsect the rights of others.

encro · Mar 15, 2004

You are right regarding AAC compatibility as it is much easier to find a Car Stereo or DVD Player that will play MP3 instead. You should see quite a few devices adding MP4 (AAC Audio Component) to their players in the next couple of years.

I'm not sure on Apple's stance regarding its DRM licence on competing hardware.

Currently iTunes doesn't allow the recording of streaming audio and I don't believe Apple would implement it either. Luckily we have great utilities such as Streamripper X, WireTap or Audio Hijack

Sparky's · Mar 15, 2004

So at this point I ask (not playing around with it frist) Can iTunes RIP AAC to mp3 before burning?

leftbanke7 · Mar 15, 2004

Sparky's said:
So at this point I ask (not playing around with it frist) Can iTunes RIP AAC to mp3 before burning?

iTunes can change anything into anything (well, from the options available) as long as you don't have a m4p (ie. protected AAC from iTMS). If you would like to change your protected AACs into anything other than an audio CD (and I don't know the legality of this so I hesitate to mention it) is to burn it into an audio CD and then re-rip it to your computer in whatever format you desire therefore removing the protection.

Of course, I have never tried to burn a protected AAC into an mp3 so I could be absolutely wrong here *wink*.

bennetsaysargh · Mar 15, 2004

where are the cd players that plays AAC files?

jxyama · Mar 15, 2004

leftbanke7 said:
If you would like to change your protected AACs into anything other than an audio CD (and I don't know the legality of this so I hesitate to mention it) is to burn it into an audio CD and then re-rip it to your computer in whatever format you desire therefore removing the protection.

perfectly legal, no problems. the only caveat is that any playlist containing iTMS AAC file can be burnt only 10 times (i think?) without modifications to the playlist...

as for the orig. post, i think the thing to do is purchase a regular mp3 CD player. they are widely available...

here's what iTunes can do:

AAC(iTMS) -> audio/AIFF CD -> (re-rip) mp3/AAC/AIFF whatever format

the end resulting file will have no protection but will sound worse than the original AAC due to re-compression.

for regular non-iTMS AAC songs, you can convert directly into mp3.

i realize some of this info is redundant but i hope it's somewhat of a clarification...

coolsoldier · Mar 15, 2004

You can get an m4p to an AIFF without using a CD via iMovie:

-Open iMovie and create a new project
-Go into the "Audio" tab, select the m4p song and click "Place at Playhead"
-Export (from the file menu) to "QuickTime" with "Expert Settings"
-Select AIFF in the save dialog.

This takes a little more time than burning a CD but it's useful if you don't have a CD burner, or don't want to use up CD-Rs.

Search

Search

Can you play itunes purchased AAC files on A Portable CD Player that supports AAC

trunksfujita

macrumors member

Horrortaxi

macrumors 68020

encro

macrumors 6502

Sparky's

macrumors 6502a

wordmunger

macrumors 603

encro

macrumors 6502

Sparky's

macrumors 6502a

encro

macrumors 6502

Sparky's

macrumors 6502a

leftbanke7

macrumors 6502a

bennetsaysargh

macrumors 68020

jxyama

macrumors 68040

coolsoldier

macrumors 6502

Our Staff