Playing old music on pc/mac - help!

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  1. #1

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    Playing old music on pc/mac - help!

    I have to make a confession first. I don't own more than 4 CD's and almost never listen to music ... however... I am trying to figure out how to listen to my music that I DO have!

    Here's the story. A few years back (2005) my hubby copied the songs off my CD's onto an MP3 player as .wma files. So far so good. I listened to them maybe once and then put the MP3 player somewhere and forgot it .... found it again on Friday and thought . hey! I have a mac now - maybe I can listen to my songs. So I copied them onto the mac and that's as far as I got.

    itunes just does not seem to recognise them; quicktime says there is an "error with the video" when I try and play them and windows player (in the parallels window) refused to play them because it could not access the internet (HUH?) - I was in Macau this weekend with no connection. I tried converting them into MP3 files, but the free converter I had downloaded just gives me error messages that don't make any sense to me.

    Anyone any ideas? This stuff is all new to me - I've never really been into this whole "mobile music" thing....They play on the MP3 player so I know they are not corrupt, but why the heck won't my mac/pc play them?


  2. #2

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    WMA is a Windows Format that is not supported by iTunes. You need to convert it to MP3 or (maybe better) AAC, and it looks like this tool does the trick for you. Sound quality might suffer, though...


  3. #3

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    Quote Originally Posted by er2:
    WMA is a Windows Format that is not supported by iTunes. You need to convert it to MP3 or (maybe better) AAC, and it looks like this tool does the trick for you. Sound quality might suffer, though...
    Yes but I downloaded a conversion programme and it won't work; and the wva files wont player on windows media player either! So not sure a different conversion software is the answer...

  4. #4

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    Quote Originally Posted by MovingIn07:
    Yes but I downloaded a conversion programme and it won't work; and the wva files wont player on windows media player either! So not sure a different conversion software is the answer...
    Change the extension of one of the files to .MP3 and see if that works.

  5. #5

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    Quote Originally Posted by Raccon:
    Change the extension of one of the files to .MP3 and see if that works.
    Nope - nothing. itunes just does NOTHING - it's like the file does not exist! No error messages, just nothing.

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  7. #7

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    Quote Originally Posted by self:
    I found that and tried it before posting - that didn't work either.

    Some browsing and discussions with other folks makes me think it's a licence issue -which pisses me off because this stuff is perfectly legal and from my own CD, not downloaded or anything ......so I guess I'm just going to have to find the original CD's and copy them again - what a pain!

  8. #8

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    Won't they just play on Windows Media Player?


  9. #9

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    Quote Originally Posted by kryzlowski:
    Won't they just play on Windows Media Player?
    Nope. [ space ]

  10. #10

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    Quote Originally Posted by MovingIn07:
    so I guess I'm just going to have to find the original CD's and copy them again - what a pain!
    Usually the easiest method. Of course you could acquire the MP3 versions of the music from another source.