Is Sveta right for me? WMA to ALE?

[Agrajag]

Hello folks. I haven't been much of a portable audio fan for a number of reasons but due to several factors, I now find I need and want an iPod (long story). I have a 60GB unit on the way and my wife owns a 20GB HP/iPod model. I'm really turned off by a few things with respect to iTunes and the player itself.

On the software side, I have about 1200 songs that I find represent my current collection. I own all of them (ripped from CD's that I actually own) and decided on WMA9 Lossless as my format of choice. I do not want to get into a debate about my format choice here. It's working very well for my needs. I wanted a format that had solid support across the products and software I use (and it works well with all of them while none of the other formats works as well with all of them) and it serves as an excellent archive/backup of all my most important music. Yes, at some point I'll want to rip all the singles off of the CD's I own but for now, just having the ones I care about is the most important thing.

Those 1200 songs take up about 30GB of space in WMA9 Lossless format on my PC and that's perfectly fine with me. However, with iTunes, that also means that if I convert to Apple Lossless, I'll have to duplicate my entire music collection from 30GB to roughly 60GB and I really can't see why I'd need the songs twice on the same system. iTunes appears to pretty much demand the double duty.

Would Sveta allow me to keep just the one copy of my music on the PC and transfer some form of it to the iPod without the need for duplication? Optimally, would it allow me to move it from WMA9 Lossless to Apple Lossless without duplication?

Is there another option I'm not aware of? For example, I've wonder if, perhaps, there might be a hack out there to allow an iPod to play other formats like WMA9 Lossless?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[Spoon]

Sveta can convert WMA to ALAC on the fly with the right codecs installed, and with the latest dbpoweramp audio player you can sync changes in your audio collection on your PC.

[Agrajag]

Spoon,

ALAC is Apple Lossless, right? I have the WMA 9.1 codec installed. Which one do I want for ALAC? The one I see has Decode only and no Encode which suggests that I can decode FROM the iPod but not TO the iPod. What am I missing?

Also, you mention dbpoweramp audio player to sync changes in the audio collection. I'm not sure how that fits in. What did you have in mind?

I'm mainly looking to find something that can essentially rip directly to the iPod without the need to duplicate my entire music collection. Is that what you meant by "on the fly"? Not trying to be difficult. I just want to be clear.

Lastly, my iPod gets here tomorrow (May 10th) so I haven't been able to try it with Sveta but so far I have no Sveta shortcut at all from the demo and any attempt to install the iPod driver gives me a very generic error during the install. I'm assuming I'll need to show the iPod to "dMC Sveta Portable Audio - Add Device" before I'll get all this working?

The good news is that if I read your response correctly, I can do what I wanted to do and that makes it a worthwhile investment.

[Spoon]

>ALAC is Apple Lossless, right?

Yes

>I have the WMA 9.1 codec installed. Which one do I want for ALAC?

Beta section this forum, itunes encode.

>I'm mainly looking to find something that can essentially rip directly to the iPod

Sorry miss read your message, you can go from cd straight to ipod.

>Lastly, my iPod gets here tomorrow (May 10th) so I haven't been able to try

You need the ipod (also the latest beta of sveta is a big improvemet)

[Agrajag]

Okay Spoon. Thanks.

I confused you without meaning to on one issue. I didn't mean rip from CD to iPod (shouldn't have said "rip"). I meant I wanted to copy from my WMA Lossless folder (f:\music) directly into the iPod without the need to duplicate files. Sounds like I can do this, which it doesn't appear you can do with iTunes.

The iPod is here and charging so I'm really curious to get going. The only part I'm not sure of is whether I even need to bother installing any iPod software from the box. I assume not and assume it'd be best not to get in Sveta's way at all.

[LtData]

You can directly copy your WMA lossless folder onto the iPod using Sveta, but note that the iPod CANNOT play wma files. You can set Sveta to re-encode these files to the format of your coice.

[Agrajag]

Thanks. That's what I wanted. I wanted to have a program that can see the WMA files and convert them, on-the-fly to Apple Lossless and move them to the iPod without having to also keep copies of the new Apple Lossless files on the PC too. I so far cannot find a direct way to copy from WMA to Apple Lossless on the iPod.

Okay, here's what I did. I installed what appeared to be the latest beta Sveta. It installed. I installed the MP4 beta codec. It installed. I then installed the Apple iPod driver. It installed. I then Sveta Add Device and chose the Apple iPod. At first it said it wasn't working. Then I changed settings, pointed it to my H: drive, which is the iPod, and it then said it was set.

I then launch dMC File Selector and chose two WMA files and clicked Convert. I chose Apple iPod. It then looked for the iPod and said it couldn't find it. I'm stuck now. I have yet to see any option for a Sveta user interface.

UPDATE: I went back and installed JUST the iPod software and formatted the iPod. That did the trick for part of this. I also am not sure how to get Apple iPod set to Apple Lossless. I think I figured this out. Spoon, you offered me an option during install that allowed me to choose if I wanted desktop icons or not. I have NO desktop icons. I don't believe in them. Thus, given the choice, I chose not to install them and thus, I never got an Apple iPod desktop shortcut to Sveta. I finally just uninstalled everything and re-installed everything and left it all at defaults except for the folder it installed to. Now I see the icon for it and it's working.

Now the only remaining confusion is how to get Sveta to copy the music to the iPod in Apple Lossless format. I see no option for that at all. Am I reading between the lines properly that in order to do this I will need to install the dreaded iTunes software and then install the iTunes encoder? If so, will Sveta still work as above, except for Apple Lossless?

Lastly where do I go to set the format for songs for the iPod? Sveta has no option that I see to tell it what format to use to copy the song. The first several times I used the arrow to move a song from the right window to the song list it just copied over the raw WMA file and put it in the Data folder. The only way I have it working now is by choosing MP3 in the Music Converter.

[LtData]

Yes, you will need iTunes installed to encode to Apple Lossless. And you should be able to use Sveta to make Apple Lossless files, as Sveta will use the iTunes encoder but still move your music.
To convert your music, click the options button and then select the encoding you want at the bottom. Also, you can set smart converting options via the "smart" button next to the encoding choice.

[Agrajag]

That seems to have done it. This could be more intuitive (I'm a user interface junkie) but the features are all there. I think I'll be registering this and using it as I go forward. My wife also has an iPod. Is it a simple matter to work with two iPod's? What do I need to know?

[LtData]

I think the only thing about two iPods is that you should only have one plugged into the computer at a time. Other than that, there shouldn't be anything special about them, as long as you remember whose iPod is whose.

[Agrajag]

I guess the core question is, MUST I use the same "device", do I want to use the same device or perhaps it's better to use multiple "Apple iPod" devices? One could be set for MP4 or Lossless while the other is set for MP3 (wife's iPod).

[Spoon]

If so create a 2nd account on your pc (also admin rights) and you can have 2 different settings.