AIFF files will not play on iPod, will on iTunes

[waxcylinder]

Both these files play ok on my "iPod Classic 160GB" serial no. 8K7491P2YMU

but I'm thinking you may have to be a little clearer in your terminology - this is my later iPod - the earlier one I had (also with touchwheel ) was just designated "iPod 30GB" purchased 2006.

By "iPod Classic" do you really mean a classic iPod i.e.an early generation before the touchwheel?

I will try to test the older 30 gig one but right now its battery is flat

Peter

[Gale Andrews]

Both these files play ok on my "iPod Classic 160GB" serial no. 8K7491P2YMU

Thanks for testing.

I'm thinking you may have to be a little clearer in your terminology - this is my later iPod - the earlier one I had (also with touchwheel ) was just designated "iPod 30GB" purchased 2006.

By "iPod Classic" do you really mean a classic iPod i.e.an early generation before the touchwheel?

I never did go on an Apple marketing course, but I thought by saying "Classic iPod" I would be understood to include all six generations, not just the sixth generation which I gather was the first to be called "iPod Classic".

I would probably include iPod Mini as well in tests, but not include Touch, Shuffle or Nano. But from what knowledge we have about this, you could also test an older Touch, Shuffle or Nano - older meaning up to 2009.

I will try to test the older 30 gig one but right now its battery is flat

Thanks for your help. Here is what Wikipedia sees as the iPod model list.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_iPod_models#Models .


Gale

[mjschmelzer]

I am running OS X 10.6.8 with 8 G RAM. Audacity 2.0.3 is installed on my main drive from the dmg installer. I have had a similar experience with Audacity-created aiff files not playing on my older ipod while on battery. I imported an aiff file created from an lp a couple of years ago, normalized the wave form, and exported the song back to the aiff file. I did this for several files which had very low volume. None of the normalized files would play on the ipod. However, I made several recordings from an lp on audacity, exported them as aiff files and they play just fine on the ipod. When I normalize files and save them as .mp3 or .m4a, they play without problem on the ipod on battery. For the aiff files which were not playing, the ipod seemed to be reading no data and skipped over the songs. I created a cd of all the songs which were not playing on the ipod, reimported those into Itunes and re-exported those to the ipod. This solved the problem for the aiff files. They also play just fine now.

[Gale Andrews]

I am running OS X 10.6.8 with 8 G RAM. Audacity 2.0.3 is installed on my main drive from the dmg installer. I have had a similar experience with Audacity-created aiff files not playing on my older ipod while on battery. I imported an aiff file created from an lp a couple of years ago, normalized the wave form, and exported the song back to the aiff file. I did this for several files which had very low volume. None of the normalized files would play on the ipod. However, I made several recordings from an lp on audacity, exported them as aiff files and they play just fine on the ipod. When I normalize files and save them as .mp3 or .m4a, they play without problem on the ipod on battery. For the aiff files which were not playing, the ipod seemed to be reading no data and skipped over the songs. I created a cd of all the songs which were not playing on the ipod, reimported those into Itunes and re-exported those to the ipod. This solved the problem for the aiff files. They also play just fine now.

Thanks for the input, mjschmelzer.

So were there two possible solutions to the AIFF files that were not playing a) run iPod connected to the computer or b) import them into iTunes on CD? Or was only b) the solution?

Did you use export multiple for the files that did not play, and add metadata before exporting from Audacity?

If you can do so, could you see if b.aiff and d.aiff here http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 65#p220365 play on your older iPod?


Gale

[mjschmelzer]

Thanks for responding so quickly.

For the AIFF files I would note that the ones that would not play were files recorded earlier and not on Audacity which were normalized and then exported. As they were single songs I'm not sure how one would use the multiple files export. But probably the solution is in this function. Perhaps there could be a quick something to do at the end of the file to redefine the end. These files already had metadata .. and I also edited some of that data.

Exporting these AIFF files from Itunes, burning a CD and then re-importing the songs from the CD solved the problem for the AIFF files. (Of course I had to delete the files I started with as there was no fast visual to know which files in iTunes with the same names would play on the iPod and which would not.) This is obviously time consuming however.

Running an iPod from the computer might work but defeats the purpose of the iPod.

The fastest solution for these quick "fixes" .. in my case of low volume .. that I could find was to save them in another format which iTunes will play .. I tried the mp3 and the m4a and they worked.

I tried b.aiff and d.aiff and they play just fine on my 6th Generation Classic.

MJ

[Gale Andrews]

For the AIFF files I would note that the ones that would not play were files recorded earlier and not on Audacity which were normalized and then exported. As they were single songs I'm not sure how one would use the multiple files export. But probably the solution is in this function. Perhaps there could be a quick something to do at the end of the file to redefine the end. These files already had metadata .. and I also edited some of that data.

The problem that we currently know about is where any of four metadata fields: Artist Name, Track Title, Comments and Copyright have an odd number of characters including spaces (for example, three characters instead of four). If the player reads the AIFF version of these tags rather than ignoring them, it may refuse the file.

Export Multiple doesn't cure this problem, but makes it more likely to happen. This is because you cannot avoid adding Track Title and Track Number to export multiple metadata unless you explicitly set Metadata Editor in Import / Export Preferences to appear at the export step and then clear those two metadata fields before exporting the file.

Exporting these AIFF files from Itunes, burning a CD and then re-importing the songs from the CD solved the problem for the AIFF files. (Of course I had to delete the files I started with as there was no fast visual to know which files in iTunes with the same names would play on the iPod and which would not.) This is obviously time consuming however.

OK. A quicker workaround is to create an additional AIFF version of the file in iTunes. See http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Expor ... od#convert but choose AIFF encoder instead of MP3 encoder.

I tried b.aiff and d.aiff and they play just fine on my 6th Generation Classic.

Thank you very much for testing. If you have any audio players other than iTunes, QuickTime or VLC it would be very helpful if you could test those two files on those. We are most interested in apps only available for Mac which may possibly try to read the AIFF tags.


Gale

[Gale Andrews]

The problem that we currently know about is where any of four metadata fields: Artist Name, Track Title, Comments and Copyright have an odd number of characters including spaces (for example, three characters instead of four). If the player reads the AIFF version of these tags rather than ignoring them, it may refuse the file.

Joel Bouchat's recent patch r12470 includes a fix that adds a space to uneven number of data bytes in the four AIFF text chunks. This should solve the problem referred to above.


Gale

[ohjeans]

I stumbled onto a fix for this. I used a USB turntable to record my vinyl records into Audacity, then "export Multiple" to turn them into AIFF files. When I loaded the new AIFF files into my iTunes, all was well. However, when I loaded the files from iTunes onto my iPod, the files appeared in the lists, but would not play on the iPod.

However, by coincidence I also had used iTunes to make playlists of each newly-loaded album and had burned each to a CD. So what I did was re-load each just-burned CD into iTunes, OVERWRITING the files I had just used to create the CD in the first place. THEN I copied the newly-overwritten iTunes files onto my iPod, and, hey, presto! They played beautifully on the iPod. I have no idea why this worked, but I has worked for every vinyl album I have converted to digital so far.

Audacity is correct in thinking that the problem lies somewhere within the Metadata software. For the very first album I converted, I did not use Open Metadata Editor, and instead typed in the album name, genre and other metadata one track at a time as I "exported multiple." The files for this first album played just as they ought to when loaded for the first time onto iPod. For every subsequent album, I used Metadata Editor BEFORE exporting multiple, and no files for those subsequent albums would play on iPod without first going through the burn-a-cd-and-overwrite fix described above.

My version of Audacity is 2.0.3 running on Windows 7, but I posted this here (on a Mac page) because I could not find this problem, nor any solutions for it, addressed elsewhere on this website.

[Robert J. H.]

The problem that we currently know about is where any of four metadata fields: Artist Name, Track Title, Comments and Copyright have an odd number of characters including spaces (for example, three characters instead of four). If the player reads the AIFF version of these tags rather than ignoring them, it may refuse the file.

Joel Bouchat's recent patch r12470 includes a fix that adds a space to uneven number of data bytes in the four AIFF text chunks. This should solve the problem referred to above.


Gale

I am still not convinced that those tags should be kept.
The information is redundant. The user has no idea what's written into those fields.
All ID3 tags can be corrected but those chunks can not and they are not synchronized with their complements (e.g. comment with "ANNO").
Is there any further research going on that can give evidence of the usefulness of these optional chunks in any pro applications?
It makes no sense keeping them when they are either ignored or thrown away by 3rd party applications at the first opportunity.

[Gale Andrews]

The problem that we currently know about is where any of four metadata fields: Artist Name, Track Title, Comments and Copyright have an odd number of characters including spaces (for example, three characters instead of four). If the player reads the AIFF version of these tags rather than ignoring them, it may refuse the file.

Joel Bouchat's recent patch r12470 includes a fix that adds a space to uneven number of data bytes in the four AIFF text chunks. This should solve the problem referred to above.


Gale

I am still not convinced that those tags should be kept.
The information is redundant. The user has no idea what's written into those fields.
All ID3 tags can be corrected but those chunks can not and they are not synchronized with their complements (e.g. comment with "ANNO").
Is there any further research going on that can give evidence of the usefulness of these optional chunks in any pro applications?
It makes no sense keeping them when they are either ignored or thrown away by 3rd party applications at the first opportunity.

My first reaction was like yours - just don't write those optional chunks because Apple's own program discards them. And I was concerned the extra space could be a problem for other players that did read those chunks.

However Steve promoted the current fix, a developer offered to fix it that way, and the files produced do play in Peak and Amadeus (although those apps don't read those chunks as I understand it).

I think it's OK - the user could produce exactly the same outcome in 2.0.3 by adding a space in Metadata Editor after a single character. If you find you cannot play an AIFF produced by latest 2.0.4 alpha in your Windows pro audio apps, please advise.


Gale