iPod and iTunes: The Missing Manual, Third Edition

Other Podworthy File Formats

The iPod was designed to handle AAC and MP3 formats the most efficiently, but it’s not limited to them. Here are the other types of music files you can play on an iPod.

WAV

WAV is a standard Windows sound format, going all the way back to Windows 95. (Most Macs can play WAV files, too.) Windows fans download WAV recordings for everything from TV-show snippets to start-up sounds and other system alert noises. A WAV song usually sounds better than the same song in MP3—but it takes up more room on the iPod.

WMA (Windows Only)

If you’ve spent years ripping hundreds of audio tracks onto your PC using Windows Media Player, you must have had quite an emotional crash when you discovered they wouldn’t work with iTunes or play on your iPod.

Fortunately, iTunes 4.5 and later can convert them into AAC, MP3, or whatever iTunes format you specify (see page 102). The fine print: they must be unprotected WMA tracks (that is, not songs you bought from other online stores like Napster 2.0, MusicMatch, or Wal-Mart—and not files for which you deliberately turned on, for some reason, Media Player’s copy-protection option). And the conversion doesn’t work unless your PC has Windows Media Player Series 9 or later installed. (If not, amble over to http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmedia to download the software.)

When you install iTunes 4.5 or later on your Windows PC, the iTunes Setup Assistant automatically offers to add your WMA files to your iTunes library (see Figure 2-6 back ...