Well, the main issue was definitely having the thumb drive formatted for the Mac and not FAT32, so that's the good news. The bad(-ish) news is that the PCM won't play the Apple lossless encoded files (ALAC), just the 'normal' AAC (AAC-LC) that I have at anywhere from 192 to 320 kbps depending on when I ripped stuff years ago.

It may play the lossless files directly from an iPod or iPhone, but I'm not set up to test that at the moment since I have iTunes match enabled which basically maxes out the AAC files on my iPhone at 256 kbps. It would be somewhat odd for the PCM to handle the lossless from the iPod but not from the USB/Jukebox - I mean, if it can handle the lossless codec, it seems like it would work anywhere? (Well, if it's going full digital and doing the decoding in the PCM anyway... If the iPod is doing the conversion and outputting analog, then it will work but you'll take an audio quality hit anyway since the DAC on the iPod typically isn't as good as one on a receiver.)

I'm going through and having iTunes make 320 kbps copies and will re-import those onto the jukebox probably tomorrow. The other music is all there with cover art though without having had to do anything funky - just dragged the folders with songs in .m4a format onto a thumb drive and told the jukebox to load them.

I'm definitely thinking of tracking down somewhere to send an email about the lack of ALAC support - Apple opened that codec (along with source code under the Apache license) in October of 2011, so it would be nice to see support integrated since it shouldn't be a license problem or implementation issue, really. (Main advantage WAV being that it uses lossless compression that helps reduce the file sizes compared to WAV.)

I also have a few pics of the PCM interface while doing the import that also show what you should see on your menu in general if you have the Jukebox option - I'll also post those later or tomorrow since I haven't had a chance to grab them off my phone yet.

 

Yep I'm using apple AAC lossless files via ipod...it's just amazing listening thru burmester. I'll try copying these to the jukebox later today and report back...

 

Hi Fester, so are you playing those from an iPod or a USB stick? My PCM certainly doesn't want to deal with my AAC lossless files directly anyway, which is definitely a bit disappointing since my real long-term goal is to re-rip my audio collection into lossless.

(Long term, you know, like at least after getting through the engine break-in period... )

 

Yep, ipod or to be more precise...My iPhone5 connected thru the USB in the glove box recognized as iPod...

 

So presumably it's doing digital out from the iPod if it's USB (the old iPod/iPhone interface having the analog pins for devices would use the onboard D/A in some cases, but I can't imagine it's doing that over USB now that I think about it - ignore that bit from my previous post...). And in that case, the iPhone in your case is probably converting from the internal AAC (AAC-LC or ALAC) to PCM (uh, Pulse Code Modulation, not Porsche Communications Module!) instead of having the PCM itself do the decode, which would explain why it works in your case.

Kind of makes me wonder if it would be wise to grab a big iPod before they disappear... Or just finish the AAC-LC conversion on a few more albums for now, get them loaded into the Jukebox, and not worry about it. Hmm.

 

+1. Apple lossless sounds great thru the Burm. I used dbpoweramp batch converter to create the AL files from my flac rips. The codec for apple lossless and flac does not exist in the pcm (which is silly really). You have to go thru an ipod to do AL or use a DVD to get MLP.