Ripping AAC with iTunes problem

[4mula1]

I use dBpoweramp to do all of my ripping for my Squeezeboxes, but my wife has an iPod and uses iTunes for all of her ripping duties because she can understand iTunes. All of a sudden using iTunes 10 to rip to AAC yields files that sound like white noise. If I switch to mp3 or alac everything sounds fine, it's just aac.

I've uninstalled iTunes + Quicktime and reinstalled it to no avail. Any ideas?

[rayman1701]

Are you using the full SBS? Or TinySC on the Touch? What player are you using? There have been some issues with ALAC on TinySC, but I've never heard of regular AAC issues. If you're using the Full SBS, did you change any of the transcoding settings, because certain players don't do native AAC and it needs to be transcoded. So I'd start with the settings and make sure there.

I use iTunes (on Windows) exclusively and have not had any issues with either AAC or ALAC, but I use the Full SBS and not TinySC on the Touch.

Re-reading your post you didn't say for certain that it was with SBS that you were having the issue, I assume it was. But if it is white noise on all playback devices, then that could be a whole other thing entirely.

[4mula1]

The white noise occurs on all playback devices that aac files ripped with iTunes are played on. I use dBpoweramp to rip to flac for my Squeezeboxes (powered by SqueezeCenter 7.3.3). I'd upgrade but can't be bothered anymore on how to make the newer versions work on Solaris 10.

[rayman1701]

That IS really strange! Does it do it at all AAC Bitrates? Just trying for instance 192 instead of 128 or 256, either variable or not. Does it still playback older encoded AAC files? What about AAC encoded thru dbpoweramp? And you said that AAC rips, but ALAC & MP3 were fine, what about ripped to WAV or ALAC then converted to AAC? I'm just wondering if something has gone bad in the rip path, like a missing component somewhere. Since it's on all playback, including the pod, I'd try the Apple Support forums or iLounge and see if similar problems have been reported, not many people here are enthusiastic about iTunes, so I'm not sure how much help you'll get. I'm using iTunes 10 and haven't had any issues, but I'm also not a super computer support person either, so after the obvious I'm not sure how much help I could be. Strange...

[MrSinatra]

why use aac?

could it be drm?

[kmr]

why use aac?

could it be drm?

Talk about a doofus comment...ripping your own stuff with iTunes has NEVER repeat NEVER installed any DRM on your ripped files. Until a few years ago, most of the music you could BUY in the ITMS included DRM, but that went out after Apple renegotiated its contracts with the labels.

So, a serious answer to "why use AAC": there's a lot of material out there that compares AAC and MP3, and finds that, for a given bit rate, AAC sounds better. If one gives that kind of stuff credence, then using AAC for iPods and the like may be preferred. That's actually what I do - rip with dbpoweramp to FLAC and AAC, with the FLACs for SBS, and the AACs for iTunes.

No idea about the OP's problem, though...

[garym]

Talk about a doofus comment...ripping your own stuff with iTunes has NEVER repeat NEVER installed any DRM on your ripped files. Until a few years ago, most of the music you could BUY in the ITMS included DRM, but that went out after Apple renegotiated its contracts with the labels.

So, a serious answer to "why use AAC": there's a lot of material out there that compares AAC and MP3, and finds that, for a given bit rate, AAC sounds better. If one gives that kind of stuff credence, then using AAC for iPods and the like may be preferred. That's actually what I do - rip with dbpoweramp to FLAC and AAC, with the FLACs for SBS, and the AACs for iTunes.

No idea about the OP's problem, though...

I'm not sure about itunes, but I do know that at some point (and maybe even now), one could rip CDs with Windows Media program and there was a setting that automatically added DRM. This caused the user of these files many headaches later on, not realizing what they had done (that is, add the unneccesary DRM to their OWN files).

[MrSinatra]

Talk about a doofus comment...ripping your own stuff with iTunes

i agree, only a doofus would rip their own stuff with itunes, lord knows i never have.

[paulster]

If you're on 7.3.3 then you might find that the newer versions of iTunes are using a variant of AAC that's beyond what the decoder in your version of SBS can decode (bearing in mind that this was reverse-engineered, I believe).

If you don't want to upgrade the whole SBS installation you could maybe try a new version of faad for doing the decoding and see if that solves the problem.

[4mula1]

Alright, I'm the OP so I'll set all of this straight.

I don't rip with iTunes for my music collection. My wife does. I use dbPowerAmp and rip to both flac and aac and import the aac into iTunes for use with my iPod and flac into SqueezeCenter.

The problem of static still persists after reinstalling iTunes, but it only affects the aac encoder; mp3, aiff, and alac all encode properly. This is on a PC running Windows XP.

As for me still running SqueezeCenter 7.3.3, I haven't been able to successfully get all of the modules for 7.5.x compiled under Solaris and have just decided that everything works and will continue on as is. I am also missing some libraries (or something else, been so long I've forgotten) that doesn't allow faad to compile on Solaris easily. Mplayer handles the few aac tracks I have just fine.

The solution (for now) is to have my wife rip with dbPoweramp and import them into iTunes manually. I'm due for a new computer soon anyway so we'll just limp it along until I get a new one.