robodoc

Tried to read up on the many posts about how to import and play music but have a remaining question. I'm about to import several CDs into iTunes so that I can play them in my new 2014 Q5 (premium plus). I haven't yet decided if I'll dedicate an iPod to the glovebox for this, or transfer files to an SD card. I'd like to use the Apple lossless format for importing, since I want to retain quality (I may also end up playing these in my home system, where it's easier to notice quality than in the car). From what I've read, that's not a problem if I use my Ipod in the Q5, but if I want to use SD cards in the Q5, that format isn't supported. So my question: is there an easy way to convert the Apple lossless files into either mp3 or m4a so that they can be copied to an SD card? Does iTunes do that easily? Can you do it one step, ie copy as a new format onto the SD card?

robodoc

Sorry about my prior question--looks like I was confused about the format of Apple lossless in iTunes. I just imported a CD that way and see that the files are actually m4a. So that should work in terms of copying to an SD card and having the MMI play the songs (I thought I read somewhere here that the SD cards don't support Apple lossless but that doesn't make sense now). I see there is an issue with playlists which I will tackles next--there are several posts about that.

newmoon

Apple lossless files share the file extension .m4a, but the MMI will not play them.

I would still keep a 'master copy' in lossless format on your computer, but then make an additional copy in AAC to put on an SD card for your car. If you use a bitrate of 192-256 kbps, they should be transparent in quality, especially in a car.

iTunes instructions here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1550

stash64

Why not use 320 kbps ?

robodoc

Thanks newmoon, I just did the experiment today and found out what you wrote--my m4a files won't play. I hadn't realized there could be a difference between filetypes with extension .m4a. They can be encoded by Apple lossless or AAC, and both will yield m4a but it sounds like the MMI will only play those encoded by AAC, correct?

Yoshimura

I would also like to understand. I have one album that I bought from iTunes and some .m4a work and some don't.

snagitseven

That album may have been a protected AAC from a few years ago before Apple removed copy protection. Check in iTunes to see if it says Protected AAC. If so, you can't copy it to play on an SD card, only from the iPhone/iPod directly. If you have several albums that are protected, you can use iTunes Match to get unprotected versions.

newmoon

Correct. The file extension .m4a just refers to the MPEG-4 Audio container format, but different codecs can be used, such as AAC which the MMI can decode, or Apple Lossless which the MMI does not decode.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4aYou could, but in my opinion, you won't be able to hear any difference, especially in a car, once you go higher than 192 kbps. There are also space constraints to contend with of around 20 GB on the jukebox harddrive and 2 x 32 GB SD cards.

robodoc

Thanks for that link. I followed the directions there but I need to figure out how best to do this. I selected all of the tracks of an album, and then selected File > Create New Version > Convert > to AAC, but it simply made a copy of each track. When I look at the files under that album in Windows Explorer, I see two MPEG 4 audio files for each song, with one set being smaller than the other (the AAC ones). I had to manually select those and move them to the SD card, then delete from the hard drive, retaining the lossless versions. There must be a better way. The web page above says that it will give an option of where to copy them, but that didn't happen.

TD02

dBpoweramp is a good Windows application for converting audio file formats. I used it to convert my Apple Lossless and AIFF libraries to 320Kbps VBR format for use in the Q. With a little bit of care in setup, you can just point it at a library and automagically convert the whole thing, writing results to a different directory structure (hard drive or direct to SD card).