Clip+ Rockbox AAC Support

[Lifeform]

Apologies if I missed this, but I did a lot of browsing and didn't see much that looked definitive. I'd like to give a Clip+ to a friend who has a moderate collection of iTunes AAC tracks. If I Rockbox the Clip+, will it play her non-DRM AAC tracks, so she won't need to use iTunes to convert to MP3, correct? If she has DRM AAC tracks, I assume that I'll need to help her remove the DRM, so I'd welcome suggestions for a good tool for that. Many thanks!

[CrowdAds]

[saratoga]

AAC is supported.

[dfkt]

For DRMed tracks, google for "Hymn Project" or "MyFairTunes". We don't provide support for these tools in the forums.

[davidbix]

Rather than start a new thread:

I apologize if I come off as a complete idiot here, but the intricacies of the MP4 container has always confused me. Anyway, Rockbox for the Clip+ supports AAC files with the M4A extension without any issues, right?

Thanks!

[skip252]

No problems for me with either .m4a or .mp4 files. Heck, I just experimented with changing the extensions around. They still play with no problems.

[saratoga]

Originally Posted by davidbix

Rather than start a new thread:

I apologize if I come off as a complete idiot here, but the intricacies of the MP4 container has always confused me. Anyway, Rockbox for the Clip+ supports AAC files with the M4A extension without any issues, right?

Thanks!

All files that people refer to as "AAC" are really an AAC stream in an MP4 container (extension is usually mp4 or m4a). There are many other ways to store an AAC file, and we do support some of the others in rockbox (AAC in RM for instance) but none have wide spread support so you've very unlikely to find any in practice.

[davidbix]

Going back to this based on what I've been told by others:

How (un)reliable is the AAC support? I've heard it can be problematic.

Thanks!

[skip252]

Problematic in what way? I've encoded AAC files with iTunes, Nero, FAAC and qtaacenc. The bitrates have ranged from about 64 kbps to a ridiculous 400 kbps. Those are actually the average results from quality based settings.

All of those have played without problems on my Rockboxed Clip+. The ones below my ABXed transparency level didn't sound as good as the ones at or above it but they played without error.

There are quite a few combinations I haven't tried as I didn't see any benefit. Once I found the combination that gave me transparency at a reasonable storage level I decided to stick with that. I did learn enough about the command line switches needed to encode to quite a few more settings. If you post what you're looking to try I'll give a shot at letting you know if it should work or not.

Of course if saratoga runs across it first he can probably tell you off hand if it's supported. I'll be able to do that for those I've actually tried.

[saratoga]

Originally Posted by davidbix

Going back to this based on what I've been told by others:

How (un)reliable is the AAC support? I've heard it can be problematic.

Thanks!

Anything from iTunes or Nero should work, but if you have some really weird files its certainly possible to break our parser. Also, files over an hour long won't decode correctly either.

FWIW I'd just use MP3 though if I was ripping new files. Theres not much advantage to AAC and MP3 will work with every device on earth.

[davidbix]

I believe that everything AAC that I have was encoded w/ iTunes or Nero so I should be good, then. Thanks!

[NicholasV]

Originally Posted by saratoga

... Also, [aac] files over an hour long won't decode correctly either.
...

What is the reason for this? Is it a hardware limitation, or due to possible room for improvements in the code for the aac implementation on the Clip Zip port of Rockbox which is still not stable?

What I am trying to get at is, will this be a permanent limitation? Thanks.

[saratoga]

Originally Posted by NicholasV

What is the reason for this? Is it a hardware limitation, or due to possible room for improvements in the code for the aac implementation on the Clip Zip port of Rockbox which is still not stable?

What I am trying to get at is, will this be a permanent limitation? Thanks.

That limitation was removed a while ago. I think now most files will be good for at least several hours before they run out of memory.