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[The Muffin Man]

Can Media Center play AIFF files that were created by copying a music cd to a Mac?
Is there a plugin?

[Alex B]

MC should be able to play them. Maybe Apple codecs must be installed (iTunes or Quick Time).

From the MC Help:




There are also some tools that can convert the files. E.g. dBpowerAMP Music Converter.

[The Muffin Man]

That's what I thought, too.  But it doesn't seem to import or recoginze them.  BTW this is the latest 11.xxx Alpha.

[JimH]

Did you install Quicktime?

[Alex B]

I converted an APE file to AIFF format (.aif extension) with dBpowerAmp. MC 11 imports it but cannot start the playback. MC 10 imports it and can start the playback, but it comes out as static. Quick Time Player playes the file fine.

[Alex B]

However, I don't think this is a biggie. Many PC users rather convert AIFF files to a taggable more PC friendly format. (e.g. lossless Monkey's Audio). The freeware version of dBpowerAMP Music Converter can do that. Also the size will be smaller. The 16 MB APE file I used for testing is 26 MB in uncompressed AIFF format.

[The Muffin Man]

I have both iTunes and Quicktime installed.
The readon I have AIFF is that I have a Mac and a PC.
On the Mac, I copied the CD to the local filesystem.
They come through as AIFF files (instead of a disk image)
and then copy them to a PC.  Where I can either listen
to them with iTunes, or burn a new CD (with iTunes).
If MC could read them, I could convert them to MP3.
If MC can't read AIFF, that's OK.  I just wanted to make sure
I wasn't missing anything, or that MC 11 wasn't missing a
feature.

[Alex B]

dBpowerAMP can convert them to MP3. Also Windows iTunes can do that if you select MP3 in iTunes preferences (import options). Convert them first and import to MC after that.

[The Muffin Man]

Yes,
I know I can convert them, etc.  I was just wondering if the support was supposed to
be there in MediaCenter.  And... what if the encoder (from AIFF to MP3) is different
or uses a different alogorithm.  I encode most of my music using MP3 VBR Normal/High,
which BTW there is no Normal/High for iTunes (it's Medium High).
Like I said, I really don't need to know _how_ to convert them (I do use
dBpowerAMP sometimes), but I was wondering if MC was supposed to support them
as is.

[Alex B]

I just wanted to offer a workaround, since you wrote that are not able to convert them with MC. I thought you didn't have a solution for that.  

You might be correct about iTunes. The encoder within it is supposedly Fraunhofer's. However, the VBR bitrate distribution looks rather strange when viewed by EncSpot program. It looks more like ABR. You may be better-off if you first convert AIFF files to uncompressed WAVE (that should be fast) and then to what you usually use by using MC.

I found that AIFF format is not working with MC 10 and MC 11. I used only one test file, but I suppose you have more experience about that. Since it's not working with MC10 as mentioned in the MC Help, I think JRiver should have a look on this. Because AIFF files certainly can be played with iTunes and Quick Time Player on Windows PC, maybe just something small has broken. Because AIFF is not one of the "Standard" supported file types there can still be limitations even if the playback bug gets corrected.

[The Muffin Man]

Thanks for the info...
I will convert them to uncompressed WAVs.  Somehow
I hadn't thought of that.  Maybe being too close and
something like "can't see the forest for the trees"