Just bought my first Apple iPod - and YIKES they don't play WAV files???

[Soul Reputation]

Four or five weeks ago I bought my very first iPod and then yesterday I took it right back to the store to get my money back. The problem: the last couple of years I recorded a lot of conversational/dialogue oriented content with a really neat, trusty and very reliable Olympus digital voice recorder. So...I have a ton of WAV files saved on my Dell desktop. I then went out and bought a 5th generation iPod Nano. I need to be able to listen to those WAV files when I walk around town, so in order to accomplish that I did what the techs at Apple told me to do, I loaded them/transferred the WAV files right over into iTunes. All of them went straight into iTunes and during the transfer process they were automatically switched over from a WAV filename extension ('automatically' I guess as we didn't do anything manually) into to iTune exe filename extension. And the iPod would not play the former Olympus WAV files! (Though it would play a song downloaded from iTunes.) I don't remember the iTune filename extension (cause we did the transfer a week or more ago plus I'm a n00b to iPods, it was my first iPod) but I do know that once we made the transer we checked the extension and the WAV extension was replaced with the proper Apple extension.

Furthermore, the techs at Apple were stumped. None of them, not even their supervisors, had a fix for this issue ready at the standby. Something like this should have been a quick-fix, not a puzzle. It should have been as easy as driving up to a fast food restaurants drive up window to order a cheeseburger. The Apple techs and their supervisors dealt the GEE WE DON'T KNOW HOW TO GET A WAV FILE TO PLAY ON THE IPOD NANO SINCE WE'VE NEVER HEARD OF THIS PROBLEM BEFORE card. They acted frickin' brainless. Seems to me a problem of this sort is one they see many times a week (people just like me who bought their first iPod who now want to be able to listen to a WAV file - WAV files that contain important conversations or important dialogue). Anyone have a fix for this? I can always go out and buy another iPod if I can find a fix. Is there something at download.com that would make an Olympus digital voice recorder WAV file playable on an iPod and if so is it a sure thing or would be like playing Russian roulette???

http://download.cnet.com/windows

OS: WindowsXP
iPod: Nano

 

[hanoverphist]

i had the same issue on my gen1 nano. i renamed the file *.mp3 instead of *.wav and it played them. kind of funky but it worked

 

[Soul Reputation]

Originally posted by: hanoverphist
i had the same issue on my gen1 nano. i renamed the file *.mp3 instead of *.wav and it played them. kind of funky but it worked

Kinda funky? Actually it sounds too easy, which is not a bad thing. Hey are we on the same page here? You mean all you did was perform a 3-step procedure that took maybe 10 seconds to complete? What I mean by that is:

1) you put your cursor on the file and right clicked on it
2) a drop down menu appeared and you selected 'Rename File'
3) you then renamed the file '.mp3'

That's it? Is that all you did to make the iPod compatible with a WAV file? One solution to this problem that someone else suggested involves more steps than the one you used. It involves downloading a specific program, an MP3 WAV converter program (I've never used one - I'm new to MP3 devices). Here's a list of them:
http://www.google.com/search?q=wav+to+mp3+converter

 

[troytime]

converting all the files with cdex sounds a LOT (srsly, A LOT) easier than renaming each one by hand

 

[NaOH]

Is there a reason you're using WAV instead of just converting it to apple lossless?

 

[hanoverphist]

Originally posted by: Soul Reputation

Originally posted by: hanoverphist
i had the same issue on my gen1 nano. i renamed the file *.mp3 instead of *.wav and it played them. kind of funky but it worked

Kinda funky? Actually it sounds too easy, which is not a bad thing. Hey are we on the same page here? You mean all you did was perform a 3-step procedure that took maybe 10 seconds to complete? What I mean by that is:

1) you put your cursor on the file and right clicked on it
2) a drop down menu appeared and you selected 'Rename File'
3) you then renamed the file '.mp3'

That's it? Is that all you did to make the iPod compatible with a WAV file? One solution to this problem that someone else suggested involves more steps than the one you used. It involves downloading a specific program, an MP3 WAV converter program (I've never used one - I'm new to MP3 devices). Here's a list of them:
http://www.google.com/search?q=wav+to+mp3+converter

thats all i did. they played in wma, itunes as well as winamp. i didnt have to use any converters at all.

 

[corkyg]

Why are you surprised? WAV (Windows Audio Visual) is a Microsoft format. Apple hates Microsoft.

 

[Soul Reputation]

Originally posted by: troytime
converting all the files with cdex sounds a LOT (srsly, A LOT) easier than renaming each one by hand

My OS is Windows XP. The WAV files are in the My Documents folder. Do I rename the WAV files before I transfer them over to iTunes or after I put them into iTunes?

 

[hanoverphist]

Originally posted by: troytime
converting all the files with cdex sounds a LOT (srsly, A LOT) easier than renaming each one by hand

thats given the converting program can batch convert. at the time (early 2000's) i didnt know of any batch converters. i also only had at most 150 .wavs in my 1200+ mp3 library. it wasnt that big a deal at the time. now, if my whole library were wavs it would have been a reason for me to either find or write a program to do it for me.

 

[troytime]

Originally posted by: hanoverphist

Originally posted by: troytime
converting all the files with cdex sounds a LOT (srsly, A LOT) easier than renaming each one by hand

thats given the converting program can batch convert. at the time (early 2000's) i didnt know of any batch converters. i also only had at most 150 .wavs in my 1200+ mp3 library. it wasnt that big a deal at the time. now, if my whole library were wavs it would have been a reason for me to either find or write a program to do it for me.

i'm fairly confident that it does.
i'd test, but i'm on a mac (double sad face actually, because i can't test...and i'm on a mac )

 

[Rottie]

Originally posted by: corkyg
Why are you surprised? WAV (Windows Audio Visual) is a Microsoft format. Apple hates Microsoft.

EXACTLY!!!

 

[BassBomb]

Google "rename master" for a fast easy program to rename mass files. I use this to rename alot of my files to get a consitent scheme.

You can use "replace" command and type .wav "replace with" .mp3

 

[Bateluer]

Originally posted by: NaOH
Is there a reason you're using WAV instead of just converting it to apple lossless?

Nuts to that, I'd say FLAC, but the iPods won't play those either.

My current 3G Nano will be last Apple product, most likely.

 

[hanoverphist]

Originally posted by: BassBomb
Google "rename master" for a fast easy program to rename mass files. I use this to rename alot of my files to get a consitent scheme.

You can use "replace" command and type .wav "replace with" .mp3

cool find, thx

 

[shortylickens]

I never bought into the iPod hype but I did try one out several years ago just to see what all the fuss was about.
Was not impressed. You have to use their unpleasant software and it only plays a limited selection of formats.
On my crappy Nokia phone I already had the ability to simply copy and paste, and it would play almost any format I could think of, and some I didnt ever use.

Lame.

 

[biggestmuff]

Were you able to play the audio files in iTunes after iTunes converted them? Do they play there? Did you review your setting in the conversion tab of the settings menu?

 

[Raduque]

Originally posted by: corkyg
Why are you surprised? WAV (Windows Audio Visual) is a Microsoft format. Apple hates Microsoft.

wat? WAV is short for Waveform Audio. It's mainly used by Windows/Microsoft programs, but it's really just a container for uncompressed PCM audio.

Honestly, I've never tried to use WAV files on my iPhone (because I simply don't have them), but I don't see why it shouldn't work. From wikipedia:

The iPod line can play several audio file formats including MP3, AAC/M4A, Protected AAC, AIFF, WAV, Audible audiobook, and Apple Lossless."

Maybe the Olympus digital recorder isn't making pure wav files, but some other codec inside a wav container that iTunes doesn't really know what to do with?

 

[yh125d]

Shoulda bought a cowon imo

 

[TheStu]

Originally posted by: Raduque

Originally posted by: corkyg
Why are you surprised? WAV (Windows Audio Visual) is a Microsoft format. Apple hates Microsoft.

wat? WAV is short for Waveform Audio. It's mainly used by Windows/Microsoft programs, but it's really just a container for uncompressed PCM audio.

Honestly, I've never tried to use WAV files on my iPhone (because I simply don't have them), but I don't see why it shouldn't work. From wikipedia:

The iPod line can play several audio file formats including MP3, AAC/M4A, Protected AAC, AIFF, WAV, Audible audiobook, and Apple Lossless."

Maybe the Olympus digital recorder isn't making pure wav files, but some other codec inside a wav container that iTunes doesn't really know what to do with?

You know I think you might be right on that guess. I definitely have a couple dozen of WAV files in my iTunes library that I have listened to on my iPod and iPhone. It is more likely that it is encoded funky on the recorder than that the device that is known to support WAV doesn't support WAV.

 

[gorcorps]

Originally posted by: yh125d
Shoulda bought a cowon imo

Ain't that the truth. It may not be as slick, but I love my D2. My friends think I'm crazy that I don't just use my iPhone for music too. They just don't understant.

 

[yh125d]

Originally posted by: gorcorps

Originally posted by: yh125d
Shoulda bought a cowon imo

Ain't that the truth. It may not be as slick, but I love my D2. My friends think I'm crazy that I don't just use my iPhone for music too. They just don't understant.

I have an HTC Fuze and previously a Kaiser I could use, but theres no matching my D2+ for music

 

[IronWing]

Originally posted by: Soul Reputation

Originally posted by: troytime
converting all the files with cdex sounds a LOT (srsly, A LOT) easier than renaming each one by hand

My OS is Windows XP. The WAV files are in the My Documents folder. Do I rename the WAV files before I transfer them over to iTunes or after I put them into iTunes?

To rename all the .wav files in a directory to .mp3 files:

Click Start Menu
Select Run...
In dialog box type: cmd
In window that opens type:
cd My Documents #Changes directory to My Documents
ren *.wav *.mp3 #Renames all files named whatever.wav to whatever.mp3
exit # closes window
Have a dog biscuit in a commie free world!

 

[darkswordsman17]

Originally posted by: yh125d

Originally posted by: gorcorps

Originally posted by: yh125d
Shoulda bought a cowon imo

Ain't that the truth. It may not be as slick, but I love my D2. My friends think I'm crazy that I don't just use my iPhone for music too. They just don't understant.

I have an HTC Fuze and previously a Kaiser I could use, but theres no matching my D2+ for music

In what aspect exactly? I believe there's ways to play back Ogg and FLAC on the iPhone/Touch now. You don't even need to sync your music with iTunes, there's plenty of ways around that. Sound quality is, very subjective, but don't assume that the iPhone is crap in that department. I'm not saying the D2 wouldn't be better for you, but all too often people hate something because its just simply not what they're used to as opposed to it actually being junk.

 

[yh125d]

Originally posted by: darkswordsman17

Originally posted by: yh125d

Originally posted by: gorcorps

Originally posted by: yh125d
Shoulda bought a cowon imo

Ain't that the truth. It may not be as slick, but I love my D2. My friends think I'm crazy that I don't just use my iPhone for music too. They just don't understant.

I have an HTC Fuze and previously a Kaiser I could use, but theres no matching my D2+ for music

In what aspect exactly? I believe there's ways to play back Ogg and FLAC on the iPhone/Touch now. You don't even need to sync your music with iTunes, there's plenty of ways around that. Sound quality is, very subjective, but don't assume that the iPhone is crap in that department. I'm not saying the D2 wouldn't be better for you, but all too often people hate something because its just simply not what they're used to as opposed to it actually being junk.

I'm not assuming iphone is crap because I'm used to cowon, just the opposite. I've owned a few ipods before and listened to iphones a bit too before I bought my D2 (my first cowon) and I def won't buy another ipod. I hate itunes, I hate that it has no expansion slot, I hate that it can't really be used like a flash drive (or used not to be at least), and it can't come close to the cowon in quality, formats, or battery life (sheesh 45-50hrs of playback in such a small device)

 

[Soul Reputation]

Originally posted by: biggestmuff
1)Were you able to play the audio files in iTunes after iTunes converted them?
2) Do they play there?
3)Did you review your setting in the conversion tab of the settings menu?

1) No, none of the 50 plus WAVE files played. Though a song we downloaded from iTunes did play.
2) Play where?
3) I took it back to the iPod back to the store so I don't remember. But if you mean 'Once you transferred the files from Windows over to iTunes did you check to see if the WAVE file extensions converted over to the iPod friendly extension?' Then the answer to that is YES.