Howto: Create AAC Audio for Second Generation Ipod Shuffle Without Itunes

I am here to describe how to create aac m4a’s for the ipoo second generation shuffle, without using Itunes, since there are no guides on the internet that explain how to do this properly.

Before we start we need several tools:

mp4creator.exe from the mpeg4iptools package
neroAacEnc_SSE.exe encoder from NeroDigitalAudio package (sse is about 4x faster on a P4)
Floola: Ipod Manager (or any other application that works as an app to put m4a’s on your ipod)
Ant Renamer (or any other batch renemer application)
Foobar2000 (for audio ripping (there are others that do this such as bonkenc, cdex, EAC make sure they support ripping and piping (to a aac encoder (neroaac preferably) as foobar2000 does)

Ripping the audio with foobar2000 is fairly easy just download the NeroDigitalAudio package from here http://www.nero.com/enu/nero-aac-codec.html, and either use the built in CD ripping function or convert existing songs using the convert option when right clicking on it and chose mp4 as the format and then save to location of choose. (I prefrebbly use audio stored in lossless formats such as flac since converting from lossy to lossy formats result in degraded qaulity). The problem (which I am asking the readers to try and solve for me) is that mp4creator does not accept wildcards… wtf… so I had to open up command prompt and (I used arrow keys to open up last typed command and changed to new track of course) used  mp4creator to switch the location of the mp4 metadata (to one that the ipod shuffle reconizes, using the -optimize switch manually… (ex. mp4creator -optimize blah.mp4)  manually (I dont know how to do it any other way sadly….)…

Well after you have “optimized” all you tracks (I personally made a special directory for the newly ripped mp4s. and placed mp4creator there and just operated within that directory to not make things more complicated then they already are), open up Ant Renamer and go to “actions” and then “change extension” and then type in “m4a” (no . or quotes). Now you go back to “files” and drag and drop all the songs that you fixed with mp4creator and are about to put on the ipod ,(it supports recursive directories) and hit “go”. Now that we are finished preparing the songs lets open up Floola. Begin by pressing “ctrl+alt+a”, which opens up the add file(s) function and drag all the songs onto that window and go 😉 (for some reason it doesn’t get metadata (specifically album and artist)…. who cares anyway its a shuffle lol). When you are finished, you can close floola and safely remove the ipod. Try listening to some new tunes… and voila 🙂 thats how to add nero encoded aac audio to your ipod.
*Please note I wrote “ipoo” on purpuse to show my feelings towards my ipod and not as a typo 😉