iTMS music on Windows

brucebruce
Posted:
in iPod + iTunes + AppleTV edited January 2014
Is there any way that I can play the iTMS music that I use on my Macs and iPod on a Windows PC? Although I'm mostly a Mac user at home, we're totally Windows at work. I downloaded the version of Musicmatch that is geared for the Windows iPod, but it just seems to hang when it sees a .m4p file.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    ast3r3xast3r3x Posts: 5,012member
    well u could convert to mp3 but u will lose a little quality...you probably won't notice though...i'd convert to 160 or greater mp3
  • Reply 2 of 8
    rara Posts: 623member
    You could burn audio discs.
  • Reply 3 of 8
    frawgzfrawgz Posts: 547member
    You'll probably have to wait for Apple's Windows version of iTunes. Downloaded music from iTMS is specifically encoded with your account information, so you have to validate the computer you're playing it on before you can play it.
  • Reply 4 of 8
    brucebruce Posts: 9member
    I think iTunes on Windows is my best bet (if it becomes a reality). iTunes wouldn't seem to let me convert the purchased software to any other format. I suppose I could burn a CD, but I had hoped just to use the files and not tie up my CD drive.
  • Reply 5 of 8
    cubedudecubedude Posts: 1,556member
    Couldn't you just copy the files from the CD to your PC?
  • Reply 6 of 8
    brucebruce Posts: 9member
    I might try that but I'm wondering if there's going to be a loss of quality going from the iTMS file to the CD, which is a conversion to aiff, then back to mp3 for the Windows machine.
  • Reply 7 of 8
    curiousuburbcuriousuburb Posts: 3,325member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by bruce

    I might try that but I'm wondering if there's going to be a loss of quality going from the iTMS file to the CD, which is a conversion to aiff, then back to mp3 for the Windows machine.



    compared to the 100% quality loss of "unplayable" files you experience now?
  • Reply 8 of 8
    shetlineshetline Posts: 4,695member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by bruce

    I might try that but I'm wondering if there's going to be a loss of quality going from the iTMS file to the CD, which is a conversion to aiff, then back to mp3 for the Windows machine.



    If you take any form of lossily compressed audio, decode it, then do more lossy encoding, you'll suffer some loss of quality. Will it be enough of a loss to notice? That's hard to say.



    The best way to mitigate any such loss of quality is to use a higher bit rate when you re-encode than that of the original compressed file. Also, since you're going to convert to MP3, uses a high-quality encoder like LAME. I imagine most listeners would be happy with the results if they took their 128K AAC iTMS music file and re-encoded them to MP3 using LAME at 192K VBR.



    I've burned nearly all of my iTMS purchases to "normal" format audio CDs for back-up. If I ever lose the music or run into any digital rights management problems, I'll just re-import from my CDs using 192K AAC.
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