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Putting a playlist onto an SD card

Avatar Michael Corgan
I have a lot of music files in aiff format. I would like to put some onto an SD card to play on an old radio with an SD slot. Will they play continuously or would I need to select each one in turn? (Or in whatever order I fancy of course). Would it be best to make the selected files into a playlist on Apple Music and copy that to the SD card?

Re: Putting a playlist onto an SD card

Avatar Richard I
Much depends on the capabilities of your radio. It is unlikely to understand an apple playlist and may not accept aiff files.

This quickest way to resolve the aiff issue is to try it on one track. Select the track in 'Music' and select copy, and paste into the SD card. Plug it into the radio and see what happens!

If successful, create a playlist in 'Music' add the tracks you require and then open the playlist, select all the tracks and copy across as before.

If unsuccessful, you may need to convert the files to MP3. Unfortunately, I haven't found how to do this. (you may need a thrid party app)

Re: Putting a playlist onto an SD card

Avatar Michael Corgan
Thanks for that. I will let you know how I get on.

Re: Putting a playlist onto an SD card

Avatar Trevor Hewson
Changing file type in Music uses the same counter intuitive method as iTunes! Somewhere buried in preferences is ‘Import Settings’. Select the file format you want to export in (I know) then, with a track or tracks selected, in the file menu you will find an entry (can’t remember whether it is convert, export or make a MP3 copy).

Re: Putting a playlist onto an SD card

Avatar Richard I
I was incredulous that Apple would have such a ridiculous arrangement, so I tried it.
And yes, Trevor is quite right.

The setting is in preferences, files, import settings. (make sure your set it back to Aiff otherwise any further imports will be in mp3 format!)
Having then selected convert, 'music' then converts the track and imports it back into your music library. So then you have both aiff and MP3 versions of the tracks.

Re: Putting a playlist onto an SD card

Avatar Rick Churchill
What you don't understand is that Apple engineers can only think in terms of Apple products. If it were an Apple radio it would accept aiff files (but have no sockets and need to be sent files over Bluetooth or wifi). If it were a Microsoft programme it would have an export feature which would export in a variety of formats.

What disappoints me is that I've just bought an expensive HiFi receiver that plays "Apple lossless". I was expecting this to be .aiff files. No, it will only play .m4a which I do not consider as lossless; so I, like you, have to continually switch my preferences between aiff to rip CDs and wav to export......still it makes the windows rattle with the bass.

But then I discovered "Music Convert-Audio Converter" which I think was free. This batch converts files. Whether you then put them in Album folders inside Artist folders is up to you. I export to a separate folder away from iTunes. Put them in the Album/Artist file structure them copy them to my USB stick. (My hifi kit doesn't understand play lists unfortunately)

Re: Putting a playlist onto an SD card

Avatar Tony Still
Apple lossless is, um, lossless; it's just losslessly compressed. I import all my CDs using that format.

You can't use some of these file extensions to tell the content because they're just containers that can 'contain' multiple different files.

Re: Putting a playlist onto an SD card

Avatar Rick Churchill
Thanks Tony.
So a file with the m4a extension is a container which can have lossless files or lossy files.

I know that one shouldn’t take everything on the internet to be true but the reason I thought otherwise is that I keep reading articles like this:
“What is M4A file? M4A is the file extension of audio files encoded using Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), which is a lossy compression. M4A is usually the successor to MP3………iTunes Store provides songs in M4A format. These songs are encoded using AAC compression, which greatly reduces the size of each file.”

I also assumed Apple would have only one lossless audio format which would be Apple Audio Interchange Format (AIFF). I now understand that this is their uncompressed format whereas the format using Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC), used by iTunes is compressed. However Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits compresses very little from 51.1 Mbytes in AIFF to 49.9MBytes in ALAC (m4a).

Music Converter will output files with two m4a alternative settings. One is called “M4A” and the other “iTunes. It also has ALAC. All of them produce a file with the m4a extension. The first two produce identical file sizes and I am going to assume that they are lossy and the last which has 10x the size is lossless but none of them play on my HiFi Receiver although converting from Apple Music does produce a file that plays.

So Michael perhaps after all if you want to use m4a files Music Converter is not for you.

Re: Putting a playlist onto an SD card

Avatar Tony Still
Sorry, replied in haste, should have given a reference. A simple one is here.

As usual, Wikipedia is useful (here) but this starts to expose the complexity of the issue.

From memory, Apple Lossless is generally expected to cut the uncompressed file size by one-third (an AIFF file is uncompressed and is typically a literal copy of a CD track, CDs not being compressed).

Re: Putting a playlist onto an SD card

Avatar Michael Corgan
The dream collapsed when, having put a test AIFF track onto an SD card, I tried it in the radio. The radio didn't see the SD card - nor would any of the other menu functions show on the screen. The CD player had been playing up too - irregular speed - and so...it went to the dump today.

Guess I'll just plug my music HD into my MacBook.

But thanks everyone for the helpful ideas.

Re: Putting a playlist onto an SD card

Avatar Douglas Cheney
When you formatted the SD card which format did you use. I had trouble with a USB stick trying to play music from a small TV. I did it in Mac OS format and it didn't play then tried MS Dos and it worked

Re: Putting a playlist onto an SD card

Avatar Michael Corgan
Thanks for the thought Doug. I was prepared to reformat the card had the menu options on the radio - i.e. CD, FM, DAB and SD - all worked. It was always an awkward thing to use and now it has gorn!

Re: Putting a playlist onto an SD card

Avatar Douglas Cheney
I formatted the card on my iMac before transferring the music over

Re: Putting a playlist onto an SD card

Avatar Tony Still
SD cards are almost always formatted as FAT/exFAT as that's universal where they're usually used.
 
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