Anyone know WMA?

Hmm... Not sure what is happening. In iTunes, you should be able to figure out what type of compression is used for any entry using "Get Info." Select a track, right click, select "Get Info," and see, on the summary page, what it says right under where the album art would be following "Kind." It should say "Apple Lossless audio file" if the directory entry is, in fact, Apple Lossless. If its an AAC file, it will say "AAC audio file" instead.

Since iTunes labels both AAC and ALAC files with the ".m4a" extension, I am guessing that the .ALAC file is being created somehow by EAC. Are you using iTunesEncode? My iTunesEncode settings are found under EAC > Compression Options... > External Compression. I have "use external compression program" checked, parameter passing set to "user defined scheme," use file extension set to ".m4a," program for compression set to "C:\Program Files\EAC\iTunesEncode.exe," and additional command line options set to "-e "Lossless Encoder" -a "%a" -l "%g" -t "%t" -g "%m" -y %y -n %n -i %s -o %d."

What are your settings showing?

Eric, can't thank you enough for your comments - as usual.

I went to iTunes and selected Get Info. The files show as Apple Lossless. Then, went to EAC and the only difference I see is that under compression options, in external compression I had ".alac". So I changed it to ".m4a".

I am assumig that the folder where EAC creates its files has to be the same one than the iTunes folder (in iTunes, under Edit-Preferences-Advanced) right? What happens if they are different folders?

Josep

Well that explains some things. One copy--the one that used to be .alac--was being created by EAC and I suspect the other--the .m4a--was being created by iTunes. Is "copy file to iTunes directory checked" in iTunes > Preferences > Advanced?

EAC has its own directory to write too... Check EAC > EAC Options there is a "Directories" tab--the directory shown is where EAC puts things. Not sure what would happen if you made it the same directory as iT...

Eric, again, thanks. You must think I am retarded!

No, the "copy files to iTunes directory" option is not checked. However, still it's creating the files twice.

I think I know why. Under EAC Options, I have the following naming scheme: %I\%A\%C\%N-%T (which neatly organizes EAC files for Genre\Artist and so on.

However, what EAC does is it creates the .m4a file in that folder following the naming scheme AND in the folder designated in iTunes. If I delete one, I can still play the other one.

How can I prevent this from happening?

Thanks!

Josep

Eric, I finally figured it out! After two weeks...

I unchecked in EAC the option "Use CD Text information in CUE Sheet" under EAC Options/Tools. Also unchecked "Create m3u playlist on extraction.

These were creating a duplicate of files. Now, it works flawlessly as you said.

BTW, I got the two 16 ft USB extendors. I connected two to reach to my DAC. I did AB comparisons and it sounds way better without the extendors. I feel Gordon was right but building a long interconnect is going to be pretty overwhelming. I've been recommended to use silk insulated solid silver wire; and that's so expensive (reaching to 30 ft)

Also, I've been suffering the Kmixer problem. How do you avoid kmixer with iTunes/ALAC and USB DAC?