Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

iPod Opinions: Separate iTunes Library for iPhone?

B

Burning Radio

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 11, 2009
141
0
Over the past year or two, I've realized the superiority lossless audio files have over lossy audio files. I've ripped quite a few albums in ALAC and now have a sizable library of 66.67 GB of ALAC and AAC/MP3 files. While this syncs perfectly fine with my 80 GB iPod Classic, It obviously will not with my 32 GB iPhone.

128kbps AAC downconversion while syncing offered by iTunes is always an option, however I personally believe 128kbps leaves a lot to be desired. I prefer at least 256kbps.

SO....

Would it be better to make a second iTunes library on the same mac with the ALAC files downconverted to 256kbps along with a copy of the rest of my lossy files? (A separate library my iPhone syncs with. Avoids duplicates in the same library but makes syncing libraries overly complicated. Is there a way to easily copy files from Primary iTunes library to a secondary library on the same HDD?)

Or should I make a playlist of 256kbps copies? (This would make my iTunes unbearably cluttered with duplicates and I don't think I'd be able to live with it.)

Anyone ever tackled this dilemma of disk space vs. quality and have been successful?

Disk space on my Macbook isn't a concern because I've upgraded to 1TB internally and have 32GB to spare for a duplicate library.

Suggestions? Thoughts?

NOTE: Sorry Moderators. I missed the stickied memo about posting in the Mac apps section.
 
Last edited:
A

androiphone

macrumors 65816
Dec 13, 2009
1,000
1
I do the same thing I have all my music in ALAC and then keep a 320kbs MP3 copy for all my mobile devices.

how I do this is just simply by having two playlists an ALAC playlist and a MP3 playlist, when I listen to music on my computer I use the ALAC playlist and when syncing to my phone I in the settings I set it to just sync the MP3 playlist.

so for you you would have a ALAC and AAC playlist and set your ipod to sync the ALAC playlist and the iPhone to sync the AAC one.

also it's dead easy to convert and separate your main 'Music' list, just sort the 'Music' list by 'kind' and drag all the ALAC to the ALAC playlist and then right click on all the selected ALAC music and select 'create AAC version', then with the 'Music' list sorted by 'kind' just drag and drop the AAC files to the AAC playlist.
 
ftaok

ftaok

macrumors 603
Jan 23, 2002
6,487
1,572
East Coast
Perhaps Apple could implement a function in iTunes for music similar to what they have for video. They can put in SD/HD versions for music and allow you to set which file gets sync to which device. For example, SD songs for iPod shuffle, but HD songs for the classic.

This would be pretty cool.

Or they could allow other iPods/iPhones to downconvert songs automatically when syncing. I think the only one that does this is the shuffle.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom