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Converting WMA 9 (lossless) to WAV/AIFF on a Mac: impossible??

S

Stecchino

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 31, 2003
105
29
Norfolk, Virginia, USA
Is it possible to easily convert a WMA 9 lossless audio file to WAV or AIFF format (let alone Apple lossless) on a Mac to make it compatible with iTunes?

I've tried EasyWMA (which flat-out didn't work; it wouldn't convert a single file. You'd think that if the sole purpose of a program was to convert .WMA files to .WAV files on a single operating system, it would work. Just recently, I read in the feedback about this program that it cannot convert WMA 9 loessless files yet (Because there is not converter for it yet??). I also tried Music Man which I can't figure out and/or doesn't work either. Both of these I found at http://www.versiontracker.com

The only other option I can think of is to play the .WMA file with Windows Media Player for Mac and capture the audio as an AIFF file with Audio Hijack http://www.rogueamoeba.com/audiohijack/. This method is a bit round about but worked.
 
jonathanlucas said:
Is it possible to easily convert a WMA 9 lossless audio file to WAV or AIFF format (let alone Apple lossless) on a Mac to make it compatible with iTunes?
Click to expand...
If it's only a few files, you could burn a CD of it, then rip it in iTunes with AIFF or Apple Lossless set as the import codec. Since you're going from a lossless format to another lossless format there should be no degredation of the sound. That's kind of time-consuming and expensive if you have tons of those files you want to convert though.
 
jonathanlucas said:
Is it possible to easily convert a WMA 9 lossless audio file to WAV or AIFF format (let alone Apple lossless) on a Mac to make it compatible with iTunes?

I've tried EasyWMA (which flat-out didn't work; it wouldn't convert a single file. You'd think that if the sole purpose of a program was to convert .WMA files to .WAV files on a single operating system, it would work. Just recently, I read in the feedback about this program that it cannot convert WMA 9 loessless files yet (Because there is not converter for it yet??). I also tried Music Man which I can't figure out and/or doesn't work either. Both of these I found at http://www.versiontracker.com

The only other option I can think of is to play the .WMA file with Windows Media Player for Mac and capture the audio as an AIFF file with Audio Hijack http://www.rogueamoeba.com/audiohijack/. This method is a bit round about but worked.
Click to expand...
EasyWMA specifically says they can't support WMA 9. You could try iTunes for windows that will reencode imported WMA files. Just make sure you specify AAC lossless.
 
iTunes will convert WMA files for you.

UNLESS they're DRMed WMA files, in which case, you're stuck ;)
 
I figure, If you have the legitimate right to have those songs, you can just hop on a P2P program and download another copy of the song in whatever format you want. Like I said, this is assuming you were the rightful owner of a copy of the song to begin with. If you don't want to go through the hassle of burning CD's, or, don't have a cd burner to begin with, I believe its legitimate for you to go this route.
 
All the files we're talking about I have a legitimate right to own and manipulate, just to clarify that...

Seeing as I am using a iTunes for Mac, I won't be able to utilize that feature. I already suggested through Apple's iTunes feedback page that they allow iTunes for Mac to import WMA files (let alone the WMA lossless which is what I need).

Thanks for your suggestions.
 
jonathanlucas said:
All the files we're talking about I have a legitimate right to own and manipulate, just to clarify that...

Seeing as I am using a iTunes for Mac, I won't be able to utilize that feature. I already suggested through Apple's iTunes feedback page that they allow iTunes for Mac to import WMA files (let alone the WMA lossless which is what I need).

Thanks for your suggestions.
Click to expand...
Well the problem is, on widows there are WMP programing tools and APIs that you can use as a developer to tap into Windows Media.. its similar to the Quicktime APIs that was used to convert the DRM AAC files to clean AAC... unfortunately, those windows media APIs don't exist/are accessible on WMP 9 for OSX...

So unless apple pays MS a fee for every mac/quicktime player sold, we're outa luck until Mplayer or somebody cracks the codec...

I would recomend using VPC to convert it. I re-encoded a bunch of TwinVQ files (bet nobody's ever heard of it :D) from winamp in VPC. It was faster than realtime on my 400 Mhz G4...
 
runplaysleeprun said:
I figure, If you have the legitimate right to have those songs, you can just hop on a P2P program and download another copy of the song in whatever format you want. Like I said, this is assuming you were the rightful owner of a copy of the song to begin with. If you don't want to go through the hassle of burning CD's, or, don't have a cd burner to begin with, I believe its legitimate for you to go this route.
Click to expand...

you don't understand the term lossless do you?
 
to the best of my knowledge, not a single macintosh developer has paid microsoft the licensing fee to use a windows media audio 9 decoder in their program.

the programs that do exist use a free library (ffmpeg) that supports only the basic wma 9 codec, nothing specialised beyond that at all (such as lossless or 5.1.) this is because the developers of ffmpeg reverse engineered the windows media codecs as best they could, but it was never entirely perfect, and newer features/codecs released since then are not supported at all (such as lossless audio and wm9 video.)

all of these converter programs being mentioned use ffmpeg (easywma, soundconverter.)
so they all have the same limited compatiblity when it comes to windows media.

check out soundtracker's versiontracker page
"ffmpeg is used for WMA and RM support but it doesn't support those formats well."

so, at the moment, the only way to do this conversion solely on a mac is to play the file in windows media player for mac, and capture it as an AIFF in audio hijack. there is no loss of quality of course, but it is certainly not a solution if you're attempting to convert a large number of wma lossless files. i assume this is what you are looking to do?
 
How big is the file? I could probably convert it for you, running windows, if you want to upload it to my FTP site:

66.41.176.163

username: macuser
password: macrumorsuser
 
ephica said:
so, at the moment, the only way to do this conversion solely on a mac is to play the file in windows media player for mac, and capture it as an AIFF in audio hijack. there is no loss of quality of course, but it is certainly not a solution if you're attempting to convert a large number of wma lossless files. i assume this is what you are looking to do?
Click to expand...

Thanks for the information. I'm in a situation where I can buy lossless music tracks in various formats, with WMA 9 being the smallest. Since this store charges by the MB, I was favoring WMA 9 lossless over WAV. Seeing that the conversion is not possible to do easily on a regular basis, I won't be buying any WMA 9 tracks.

SiliconAddict said:
How big is the file? I could probably convert it for you, running windows, if you want to upload it to my FTP site
Click to expand...

Thanks for the offer! For my test files, I just used Audio Hijack and WireTap to convert to an AIFF.
 
ephica said:
to the best of my knowledge, not a single macintosh developer has paid microsoft the licensing fee to use a windows media audio 9 decoder in their program.
Click to expand...
Actually, there is one. I don't think its sorenson squeeze, but its something like it. I remember reading about it on macworld.com somewhere. It can also compress Realmedia 10 from QT. I don't remember what its called...
 
ephica said:
to the best of my knowledge, not a single macintosh developer has paid microsoft the licensing fee to use a windows media audio 9 decoder in their program.
Click to expand...
Actually, there is one. I don't think its sorenson squeeze, but its something like it. I remember reading about it on macworld.com somewhere. It can also compress Realmedia 10 from QT. I don't remember what its called... but since of course they need to pay licensing, its not free...
 
WMA is a compressed file. converting it to a WAV or AIFF will seriously bloat the compressed WMA.

don't buy WMAs. buring to CD and re-ripping a WMA wih DRM is your only semi-legal avenue...


peace.


iTunes WMA import
 
neut said:
WMA is not lossless... it is a compressed file. converting it to a WAV or AIFF will seriously bloat the compressed WMA.

don't buy WMAs. buring to CD and re-ripping a WMA wih DRM is your only semi-legal avenue...
Click to expand...

The posts in this thread are usually referreing to WMA 9 Lossless.
 
jonathanlucas said:
The posts in this thread are usually referreing to WMA 9 Lossless.
Click to expand...

oops, thanks. i noticed when i was writing but failed to change it after posting.

yeah, it's basically Windows version of Apple Lossless (<-->).


just wondering... is there any software on the PC side that will convert Apple Lossless to WAV?


peace.
 
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