iTunes Music Store and Creative

Snickers Man

Couldn't find any answers to this problem in the FAQ. Please redirect if it has been dealt with elsewhere.

For historical reasons I use iTunes on my PC (wintel) to organise my music. I have even gone to the music store and bought a few tracks nice and legally.

I have recently bought a Creative Zen V portable player and am very happy with it. However, the music I have bought from the iTunes Music Store is in a format (Protected AAC) which is not supported by my Creative, so I cannot download them to it. Nor can I convert them to MP3 format using iTunes because it won't let me.

Does anybody know:
a) if there is some way of converting protected AAC files (which presumably could be played on an iPod) to a format recognisable by a Creative eg WMA or MP3?

or

b) if there is another online music store which rivals the iTunes one in availability and price of music offered but which offers digital formats that could be played on a Creative.

Either I'm very thick (it has been said) or any suitable answers would IMHO belong in the FAQ being generated.

Thanks

PS please don't answer with the obvious "Go buy yourself an iPod, dude" That's just being a smartarse.

Chardee MacDennis

burn them to a disc - you get 5 burns with each song and rip them back.

Snickers Man

Call_me_al wrote:

burn them to a disc - you get 5 burns with each song and rip them back.

Is that all there is to it?

You're a genius! Thanks.

iFight

You lose a bit of quality though afaik. But it will work

Mully

Snickers Man wrote:

Does anybody know:
a) if there is some way of converting protected AAC files (which presumably could be played on an iPod) to a format recognisable by a Creative eg WMA or MP3?

or

b) if there is another online music store which rivals the iTunes one in availability and price of music offered but which offers digital formats that could be played on a Creative.

a.

I use a program called Tunebite, which converts AAC files. It cost €15 (I think)

http://www.tunebite.com/en/tunebite/index.html



b.

www.7digital.co.uk

I like this site as it allows you to chose the format that you buy the tracks in, also the bitrate is 192. for mp3

Makaveli

dbpoweramp will convert m4a/aac to mp3 if you download the plugin for it. Don't bother paying for something like Tunebite when it can be done just as well for free.

www.dbpoweramp.net

Also, as said, transcoding from a lossy source (aac/m4a/mp3/ogg/wma) will result in further quality loss. Lossy formats are already quite heavily compressed so you will lose quality whether you can hear it or not is another thing thought.