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By Dennis Lloyd

Publisher, iLounge
Published: Tuesday, April 6, 2004
News Category: iPod Windows

There are two options you have to prepare your music for the iPod.

1) Re-rip:

While this solution may perhaps be tedious, it will result in the best audio quality. Re-import your music directly from the audio CDs using AAC or MP3 formats. For simplicity’s sake we recommend iTunes, although you do not *need* to use iTunes to re-import your audio as long as you use AAC or MP3.

For help with importing CDs with iTunes, see our iPod 101 tutorial.

2) Convert:

You’ll chose this option if you don’t have the original source CDs, or if you don’t want the hassle of manually re-importing your music one CD at a time. You may, however, see a slight decrease in audio quality as a result of the conversion process. To convert your music directly from WMA to MP3, we recommend the following program:

dBPowerAMP Music Converter - Freeware

There are other software options (paid shareware), but the above program does the job extremely well, and it’s free! dBPowerAMP will allow you to convert WMA directly to AAC (get the .mp4 codec) or MP3.

Here’s a “crash course” to get you started:

1) Download and install dBPowerAMP first.

2) Follow the instructions here to enable .wma capability in dBPowerAMP.

3) Follow the instructions in the QuickStart Guide included in your installation.