Converting MP3’s to Work with Your DSi

If you currently own a Nintendo DSi, you’ve probably heard about the DSi’s ability to read and play music files from a SD card. This is a very exciting feature, since it enables you to also use your DSi as a portable music player.

To properly format your music files so that they can be read on your DSi, you do need to have a bit of technical ‘know-how’ of how the DSi recognizes music files. To simplify this process, here is an easy step-by-step guide for converting music files so that your DSi will be able to play them successfully.

However, convincing your DSi to read music files isn’t quite as easy as simply copying them onto a SD card.

Introduction to the *.aac file format for your DSi

With a quick internet search, most official Nintendo FAQ’s will tell you that the DSi is only able to read files that are in the *.aac format. However, this is slightly misleading. While you need to encode your files in *.aac format in order for them to be read by your DSi, they need to have the extension *.m4a. To explain this, think of the *.aac format as the internal contents of a music file, and the *.m4a as the container that these files are placed in so that they can be recognized by the DSi. This is the main reason why many people encounter problems with their DSi reading *.aac music files, since they are not packaged in the *.m4a container. There are several different methods that you can use to convert music files so that they can be recognized by your DSi, though the simplest method involves using iTunes.

Converting music files for your DSi using iTunes

The iTunes music player has a built-in feature that allows conversion of music files in your iTunes library to “.aac” (*.m4a) format. This is the simplest method you can use for converting your files, though the iTunes converter does take a slightly looooooooong time to convert music.