AAC with mp3 players

April 21, 2006 2:36 PM

Are there any MP3 players that will play .acc files other than an iPOD, or am I screwed

I ripped all my CD's to .aac and now am considering a different player

posted by tirebouchon to computers & internet (14 comments total)

My understanding is that most phones with music player capabilities support AAC. Panasonic appearantly has some players with AAC support.

Honestly, I can't see being in the digital audio player business without supporting unprotected AAC. Why make people re-rip their CD collection before they can switch from iPod.
posted by Good Brain at 2:46 PM on April 21, 2006

Look here.
posted by selfnoise at 2:47 PM on April 21, 2006

Some players can be flashed with the Rockbox firmware to enable support. Philips made some players that supported AAC a few years ago, there weren't particularly recommended. Related info: Why are iPods the only DAPs to support AAC/MP4?
posted by unmake at 2:50 PM on April 21, 2006

May this project would help?
posted by Squid Voltaire at 3:18 PM on April 21, 2006

I guess it would be more useful if I added that that seems to be a MePro that converts AAC to MP3, but only on a Mac. I haven't tried it (as I don't have a mac).
posted by Squid Voltaire at 3:19 PM on April 21, 2006

Well, if all else fails, iTunes can convert your aac files to mp3. Select the ones you want to convert and click Advanced>Convert and it will do the rest for you.
posted by idiotfactory at 4:08 PM on April 21, 2006

And if that fails, burn 'em to a CD and reimport them as MP3. Sucks, inconvenient as hell...I finally broke down and bought a frickin' iPod...GAH! Dual technology household.
posted by airgirl at 4:29 PM on April 21, 2006

You really don't want to convert your AACs to MP3. Lossy codecs work by throwing away information, and different codecs throw away different things. When you convert from AAC to MP3 (or, basically, between any two lossy formats), you get all the problems of BOTH codecs, and far fewer of the benefits.

Short version: it often sounds like crap if you do that.

If you ripped with Apple Lossless (which I think also has an .aac extension), you'd be fine converting to MP3... but keep the originals too, since you can regenerate any other format you want if your source is lossless.
posted by Malor at 5:40 PM on April 21, 2006

Short version: it often sounds like crap if you do that.

It may sound like crap if both encodings were done at a low bitrate. But if you're using a low bitrate in the first place, it may not sound like crap in a way that you're going to notice. At higher bitrates, the quality loss from a single generation of transcoding is barely noticeable.

I've tested this for transcoding between mp3 and ogg vorbis; I should do it for AAC, too.
posted by hades at 6:23 PM on April 21, 2006

Probably not what you're looking for but any device running Windows Mobile can play .aac.
posted by ed\26h at 4:18 AM on April 22, 2006

This isn't important, but although the format is called AAC, that's not the file extension. It's either .mp4, or if you ripped with iTunes, .m4a. Apple Lossless uses .m4a as well.
posted by Mwongozi at 6:44 AM on April 22, 2006

You could look into getting a pocket pc. There's a piece of free software called BetaPlayer, that plays nearly every format.
posted by matkline at 11:04 AM on April 22, 2006

And just to pipe in that Aeroplayer for the Palm OS also has an AAC codec. I use it on my Clie with a 1 GB memory stick to play my MP3s. OGGs and AACs. Then there isTCPMP as an MPEG1, MP4 video player too - plus the PDA is a game unit, PIM and English/Japanese/French dictionary, atlas, etc.etc.etc.
posted by birdsquared at 3:48 PM on April 22, 2006

This isn't important, but although the format is called AAC, that's not the file extension.

.AAC is used for raw, or unwrapped AAC audio; many (most?) encoders will output such files. iTunes wraps them in .M4A containers (.MP4 renamed by Apple), and its market-share has made this the de-facto standard..

If tirebouchon really has a bunch of .AAC files, they may have to be 'wrapped' in order to be played on some hardware - conversely, if they're actually M4A files, they may need to be renamed or unwrapped to play on non-ipod devices.
posted by unmake at 5:43 PM on April 22, 2006