Batch convert WMA lossless to ALAC?

[Lord Chaos]

What I have are about 15,000 songs encoded over the last year and a half to WMA lossless on a PC. What I need is a way to play these files using Itunes, as I intend to replace the PC with a Mac Mini. Nicecast (for Shoutcast broadcasting) uses Itunes as its player.

I don't really want to convert the files, but my searches have turned up no on-the-fly converter. So, now I'm looking for a way batch-convert my music. My questions are:

1. Will dBpoweramp's converter do this job?
2. Will it leave my existing WMA lossless files alone?
3. Will it write the ALAC files to an offboard Firewire or USB hard disk?
4. Will the data tags survive the conversion?
5. I assume there will be no fidelity issues due to the conversion, but I've been surprised before. Is there something else I should look at for this?

The job will be complicated by the fact that my music is scattered through many folders on several hard disk partitions. I wish I'd known back when I started this what I know now.

Thank you for your help.

[LtData]

Re: Batch convert WMA lossless to ALAC?

1. Yes via Batch Converter, but it will take two passes to do so. This is due to the fact that the files produced by dMC aren't directly streamable by iTunes. Running the "mp4/m4a optimize" utility codec on the m4a files will let them be streamable, but this can only be done after the files have been encoded to m4a. Again, you can use the batch converter to do both of these things.
2. By default, yes
3. Yes, but of course it will take longer than encoding the same files to an internal hard drive
4. By default, yes
5. There is a known bug with dMC-created ALAC files when they are played on an iPod.

If you do decide to use dMC, we recommend using dMC r12. The m4a/mp4 codec for r12 is currently located in the beta section of this forum. Make sure that you check the "Hint Track" checkbox when you are encoding, if you are not using ALAC.

[Lord Chaos]

Re: Batch convert WMA lossless to ALAC?

Thank you, LtData.

I'm not sure I fully understand your comment about the conversion requiring two passes. One problem might be that I don't know what an m4a file is; is that the same as Apple Lossless (ALAC)? In order to be able to stream my music using Nicecast, all I need is to get the music into a format that Itunes will recognize. As an example, I've used Itunes to play some WAV files on my Mac, through Nicecast to the Shoutcast server.

So, if dMC doesn't need to do the streaming, do I need to go through the m4a step? I looked around the site here for a manual for the program but didn't find it.

[LtData]

Re: Batch convert WMA lossless to ALAC?

m4a or mp4 are the extensions for ALAC files, yes. However, a m4a/mp4 file could be a lossy file or a ALAC file.
Since iTunes itself isn't doing the streaming, your files may be fine without the optimize step.