PLEASE HELP! music file conversion! (1 Viewer)

[Mille03]

Hi,

I have had my ipod video for 3 years now, and it's been freezing constantly for 2 of them. I am ready for a new MP3 player, and I'm not looking for an ipod. My favorite device I've seen so far is the CREATIVE ZEN X-FI. The problem is that I have an itunes library with almost 4,000 songs on it. Is there a way that either this player will work with my itunes, or a way to convert all my files to another format, in a fairly easy way.

Thanks!

 

[EricSchulz]

It's not easy, but burning the songs in iTunes to CD, then importing them to non-Apple product is one way to go...

 

[Mikael Soderholm]

I was under the impression the music format on iTunes was in fact mp3, am I wrong, or can you chosse different formats? Anyway, there are lots of free sound conversion utilities out there, some good, some not, I usually just Google for whatever conversion I happen to need at the moment and see what comes up; ie wma>mp3, mp3>ogg etc.

 

[Greg_R]

Ummm, what exactly needs conversion? You itunes files are stored on your computer's HDD in their various formats (typically mp3 or aac). Simply copy them from that location to the folder of your choice. Your itunes store purchases can't be played on other hardware (unless you bought the DRM free versions).

 

[Philip Hamm]

Actually they can. You need to export them to audio CD using a CD-RW and then import and convert them to MP3 using "CDEx" or some other utility. Be sure to set the setting for "CD Text" in the Itunes export options!!!

HUGE time consuming pain in the ass teaches quite a lesson regarding Apple and Itunes. (hint: the lesson is that APPLE SUCKS! Use Amazon for downloads of DRM free high quality MP3s).

 

[Greg Layton]

Another solution is to not buy MP3s at all. I'll be buying CDs right up until they day they stop making them... and that will be a sad day indeed.

 

[FilmIt]

Thanks, that's really useful!!

 

[Greg_R]

Ahh, I didn't know that was now possible. I've been using a program that we can't discuss on this forum to get around the DRM issue (and that program is almost as painful as exporting to CD-RW).

 

[Greg_S_H]

I buy CDs, too, even when the songs are available on iTunes. But, there are some songs/albums that are only released in digital.

 

[Philip Hamm]

And it's perfectly legit. When Sony shut the door on their failed online music store this was exactly the way they informed users to export their prorpietary SONY downloaded songs.

 

[windbell]

As I know iTunes downloaded audio files (M4P - "protected AAC") have DRM protection which prevent users from converting it to other formats or playing iTunes media with other incompatible players such as Creative Zen, PSP, Zune, etc.

So, you will need a professional DRM converter to convert the DRM M4P files to mp3 for creative zen.


Free download Daniusoft Digital Music converter, drag and drop the protected files to it

It can convert the DRM protected music (wma,m4p) to any other formats and extract audios from DRM video (wmv, m4v, asf, etc).

 

[Philip Hamm]

Burning an audio CD than ripping it works, too. But is very time consuming for large amount of files.

 

[Todd Stout]

I know it's a bit late for you at this point but I have been converting my CDs to mp3 format and then importing them into iTunes since I got my first iPod 2 years ago. I have never been comfortable buying music files for various reasons (DRM, hard drive failures, etc.) so I still buy CDs and then convert them to mp3. I also burn my mp3s to DVD-R every few months or so in case my hard drive does fail on me.

I spent several days researching how to make the best quality mp3 files for my shiny new iPod before I put a single music file on it. I finally decided that using EAC (Exact Audio Copy) with LAME encoder (both free) would be the best way to go. Thankfully this process creates mp3 files that are in a logical directory structure so that I can use them in whatever music player I happen to end up with in the future.

Most of the mp3s I create sound great on my aging 5th gen 80GB iPod with Sennheiser PX-100 headphones. From time to time I do end up with mp3 files that have an annoying crackle in them for some reason (any ideas as to why?) but that doesn't happen very often.