This past week I fired up iTunes to play some Internet radio from ChristianRock.net as I often do. But this time it didn’t work. I knew the ChristianRock.net had upgraded their setup but surely iTunes would play it. Right? After doing a little digging I found that’s not the case. ChristianRock.net and many other Internet radio stations us AACPlus to power their streaming audio. This allows them to use less processing and bandwidth while still providing the same level of sound quality. But, iTunes doesn’t support AACPlus. Songbird, the blatant iTunes clone/rip supports AACPlus and is one of the recommended solutions from ChristianRock.net. While it’s still in Developer Preview and is missing a lot of features even this newcomer is supporting the Internet Radio stations. If you are like me and want something tried and true to play these stations than the tool of choice is VLC. But, iTunes still seems crippled without being able to play AACPlus. It’s an inconvenience that makes me like iTunes a little less.
