Entertainment For Lively Minds
Old MP3 Player Help!
Posted by humphreym on 29 December 2009 - 10:06pm.
I broke my Ipod before Christmas, I left it on top of the car, drove off, and later found it in two pieces on the road! So, as I can't afford a new one for a while I'm back using my old Creative Zen Nx 30 GB. I use XNJB for Mac to transfer the music, but it only seems to want to accept mp3's. I have a load of music in aac format and, before I convert it all, does anyone know of anyway that I can get the Zen to play aac files? I tried searching online but found nothing.
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That'd be the Nomad Jukebox then??
I used to have one of these a while ago. Could it be that the Jukebox was out even before aac files were invented?
I've no idea if such a thing exists but might there be a software update for your machine at the Creative site?
I'd guess that if you've any DRM files, you can forget about them.
I know that I'm being no help whatsoever here and please don't think I'm being a pompous bastard but it's a good idea to encode/download your files as .mp3 files, as they play on every machine. Lots of major manufacturers default settings won't allow you to transfer your files to other devices.
Yeah it's the..
Nomad, and yes you are being helpful! I didn't even consider that it would be released before AAC. I'm going to convert the files, and then rip to mp3 in future! Thanks!
Since it's a first....
.....that I'm actually being helpful....can I offer another bit of advice?
If you convert your .aac files to .mp3, then you're going to get sound quality loss. The files will be 2nd generation. Did you ever get a copy of a cassette tape that was a copy of a cassette tape? The sound quality drops every time the tape is copied. It's the same thing if a (lossy) file is converted to another (lossy) file.
If you convert your .aac files to .mp3, you won't be happy with the results. There's nothing you can do about the downloaded .aac files. Convert them if you like but make sure you keep the originals for when you get your new player.
For the CDs that you own.....re-rip them using whatever software you like (iTunes, Windows Media Player, CDeX..etc) but ensure that you encode to .mp3.
192 VBR is fashionable.
Thanks...
I know about the quality loss so am prepared for that, I'm hoping to get a new Ipod from herself as a birthday/wedding present in a few months so I can live with the quality for the moment! I will rip all my CDs from now on as mp3. I've also kept the original files that I converted. Thanks again for the help!
192kbps VBR mp3 maybe fashionable
but, I'd counsel anyone against ripping to it without carefully auditioning it first.
In my humble opinion, anything less than 256kpbs results in an audibly inferior recording. With the cost of disk storage these days I'd always advise that there's no reason to rip at less than 320 CBR.
Anything important I keep as original FLAC for archive purposes and rip to 320 for listening/iPod.
Once you've lost the quality, you can't get it back!
It was just an off the cuff remark stimpy.
192 works fine for me when I'm cutting the grass or shovelling snow.
How did you get to your humble opinion? Have you actually listened to the same song ripped at 3 or 4 different bitrates? Me....I haven't got the time.
Now....if you've got the tab for the piano or guitar outro to Tom Waits "29 Dollars"....that'd save me some time.
Important....hehehe!
How?
When I decided to go fully digital about 5 years ago, I got my engineer to knock me up an ABX box - this then enabled me to do proper blind auditioning of a few sample pieces* at various rates and compare them to the original.
We found that, up to 256kbps, I could spot the mp3 almost every time. At 256 it was marginal but at 320 I couldn't distinguish the mp3 from the original.
I guess the whole process took a day but, given that I was going to rip all my music once and forever, it seemed worthwhile spending some time to make sure I made the right decision.
*King Crimson - Starless, Elton John - Capt Fantastic, Mozart - Dies Irae, Miles Davis - Sketches Of Spain; my standard auditioning pieces.
If you have to convert files...
... I've used a program on my Mac called Switch which will convert (just about) any audio file to mp3. It's very easy to use and the mp3 quality is decent.
Try rockbox
I gave my iRiver a new lease of life by switching to rockbox, an opensource alternative to the software that came with the player:
http://www.rockbox.org/
No idea if it works for the Zen is one of the players it works with but the website should tell you.. Also, I suspect that AAC is Apple's proprietary format and won't run on anything else. No doubt there are converters out there though...
AAC is not proprietary
The AAC format is not proprietary. It's an ISO standard, and actually somewhat more open than MP3. Even Sony support this format these days.
Apple's DRMed files will only run on Apple's own hardware, though.
Thanks for that
Another piece of life's jigsaw falls into place. In fact, I've now twigged that rockbox can play aac files, thereby allowing me to use itunes should I need to do so - cheers!
edit: except that they're DRM and not supported. hey ho
thanks...
will check out Rockbox. I used to have it on my ipod, and loved it!
I can recommend...
...Format Factory for file converting and I think it'll do AAC>mp3.