Music File Confusion - Guru Advice Sought

Lunar

Lunar

New member
Any expert help on the below gladly received!

Currently using a USB connected 8GB iPod Nano (4th / 5th gen.) in the car and want to change to an SD card for greater capacity and to tidy up the armrest storage.

Need to rip my CD collection on an iMac running Sequoia, with an external ASUS drive.

Car unit (not F-Type) will only read…

.MP3 (fixed and variable to 320 kbits/s and 48 kHz).
.WMA (Fixed to 384kbit/s and 48 kHz. No DRM encrypted files or WMA Pro).
.aac files (.aac .mp4 .m4a .m4b - iTunes .m4p files not supported).

Want to have better than MP3 quality and album art.

Want to be able to play the same ripped files from iMac via bluetooth dongle to my home stereo, without having to duplicate to a different format.

I have no desire to have any music files on my iPhone.


Should I rip the CD’s using the Apple Music app or use a 3rd party iMac app?

What format and settings (where not auto set) should I use to rip the CDs to achieve the above desired outcome?


Many thanks for whoever can supply some clear words of wisdom on this.
 
Morning Lunar,

Try Installing VLC on your stick I know It works with movies and other apps but I'm not sure If will solve your problem you out as I'm In no way shape or form good at these things

Good luck,,,Davy
 
Many thanks Davy - I remember some vlc files from work videos, so will look into its abilities.
 
AAC encoded audio format is pretty universal and generally offers better quality than MP3 for the same file size.
.aac files are just the raw audio. As you want album art, you'll need AAC audio in a container format, most often a .m4a file.
.mp4 files are a similar container format but usually used for video.

I would expect .m4a files containing AAC audio, album art and other metadata to serve all your needs.
Complexities and limitations sometimes apply!
 
Brilliant - exactly the sort of answer I was looking for and not too technical for me!

I’ll experiment with ripping a CD to .m4a and playing around with the result.

Thank you.
 
No problem. I use mediainfo to examine what is inside files in terms of their audio coding etc. You might like to check the results of your ripping, to confirm AAC stream and its bitrate.
https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo
 
If you've ripped your CDs to Apple Music, I can recommend an app called Export for iTunes to load the stuff you want from the Mac onto USB for the car. The app is highly customisable and also transfers artwork. Available in the App Store.
 
Thanks for the info.

I’m already halfway through C of my A-Z collection and have checked that I can play the files on my Arcam stereo kit using the iMac as the controller and sending to a Bluetooth dongle into the pre-amp, so all going to plan so far.

Got a 64Gb (max. size for car media system) Extreme Pro SD card ordered for £13, so just need to successfully copy the music files to the card and check it reads and plays ok.

If I don’t hit a hitch along the way it will be nice surprise with regard to me and getting tech to do what I want, instead of what it wants to do, so fingers crossed.
 
Lunar said:
Got a 64Gb (max. size for car media system) Extreme Pro SD card ordered for £13, so just need to successfully copy the music files to the card and check it reads and plays ok.
Click to expand...

One possible glitch is that the SD card will need to be formatted as exFAT to work in various places.
Mac OS allows special characters (such as asterisk, question mark, or pipe) in filenames that exFAT does not allow.
Ideally use a copy programme that changes those characters to be compatible.
Good luck!
 
I use Audacity to change the format of already ripped music files. For example my WAV files to MP3 just for my car ipod. Might save you some time if it will convert to what you need?
 
Thanks for the recommendation.

Since going from iTunes to Apple Music I’ve lost a lot of files along the way so I'm ripping my collection from scratch.

As mentioned, I don’t really want to be messing about with differing file types and duplicate files, so am happy with a common file type somewhere between .wav and .mp3.

…assuming that everything works as planned, thanks to good advice from everyone :)
 
If you're listening in the car, I'd suggest you won't get any extra benefit from going better than the best quality mp3 format.
 
True, but as mentioned I want to use the same ripped files on my Arcam + Totem Acoustic home stereo.

IMG_9802.jpeg
 
Nice bi-amping! Some might be horrified by your intention to listen to lossy compressed music on a nice stereo like that.
But modern encoders set to the highest quality - around 300kb/s - lose very little. I can't tell the difference (although younger ears might).
 
Thank you!

Yes, I picked it all up relatively cheaply when everyone was going to the multi-room mono stuff like Bose and Sonos.

It’s all their top end FMJ Full Metal Jacket units - pre-amp, 2x power amps, DAB tuner and HDCD with the Ring DAC - I used to have an irDoc linked to it too, but it expired.

Each power amp has 2 channels so I have fully separated LH and RH amplification, using a double wire for the mid-bass speaker and single for the tweeter.

It pairs really well with the Totem Acoustic Hawk speakers and there’s no equaliser, bass, or treble control - it just plays exactly what’s on the CD.


…having said all that I have some mid-range hearing loss and fairly strong constant tinnitus - think open fridge door alarm.

This makes it all rather irrelevant but hey, it’s the principle isn’t it!
 
Looks good, but sounds a bit like me, upgrading my tv to 4k then remembering my eyesight means I can no longer tell the difference!
 
Lunar said:
It pairs really well with the Totem Acoustic Hawk speakers and there’s no equaliser, bass, or treble control - it just plays exactly what’s on the CD.
Click to expand...

I thought equalisers are to tune the room, not the CD's contents. :?
 
I’ll try plugging an equaliser into a wall socket and see if I can tune my room 😉

…I do get what you mean though.
 
300+ CDs now ripped to .m4a - and half a dozed embarrassingly naff ones ditched!

41 of my favourite albums copied to the SD card and it seems to play fine in the car, with the album art too.

With the change of format I’ve tweaked the balance between each of the 3 pairs of speakers (dash corner tweeter, door mid-bass, footwell bass) and I'm very happy with the result.

When I first bought the car I was less than impressed with the audio quality, however I don’t think the original owner ever turned the stereo on, as the speakers definitely seem to be responding better now they have a good few hours use on them

I was also non-plussed to find that there were no rear speakers behind the seats on the base audio and the aluminium grilles are just for show - I did wonder why the fader control was greyed out! Further investigation proved that the rear audio wiring harness is also not installed, so if I wanted to upgrade it was going to need some serious investment. Having constant tinnitus and some hearing loss it would be pointless to throw a few thousand pounds at say an active upgrade on a roadster.

Again I’m happy with the front facing sound now, and after all, when do some of the band stand behind you to play?!

As with most things in life it’s a subjective topic, but I’m very pleased to be hearing some good sounds.

Thanks to guru pirateprentice for the invaluable advice - and I’ve replied to your DM re. my bi-amped home set up :)
 
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