Managing Multiple Formats in iTunes

[grrr223]

Does anyone have ANY suggestions in a good direction to go on this? I've been meaning to learn Applescript recently, so i'm up for some work if it has a good result.

Here's my situation:

Originally, I had been ripping my CDs at 192 AAC because I figured that would handle any problematic songs that might not do well at say 128, and it would be acceptable to listen to on my home stereo while not taking up too much space on my iPod (about 5,500 songs on a 30 gb).

However, Apple Lossless Encoding and Airport Express have kinda turned my world upside down by making some new things feasible finally. I live in an apt and my 1.25Ghz powerbook is never far away, but I hate plugging an audio cable in to listen to iTunes through my stereo. Airport Express will solve that problem AND finally provide a digital out to iTunes which I have grown to love. The addition of a digital out kinda makes me want to take advantage of it's greater quality output. Since hardrive space is cheap (I have 80 on my powerbook, and another 250 external LaCie firewire 800 drive, and I'm about to get another 250 I think), I'd like to rip all my CDs in ALE and let this be my main music source. I figure at this point I can either buy another 400 disc CD player for another big ass hard drive, which both cost the same (about $300), and the hard drive gives me greater control over playlists and all that.

So, what I'd like to do is rip everything using Apple Lossless, but since I don't want to use thse huge files on my iPod, and since I don't need the 192 on my iPod since these songs would no longer be doing double-duty as the source of my home listening material, Does anyone have any suggestions on how to manage 2 copies my music? I'd like to keep my sanity...somewhat, if at all possible. But I'm for a bit of juggling.

Essentially, I'd like to keep Apple Lossless songs off my iPod, and make sure that the lossless version is the one that's being used at home. One complication to all this is that I have a bunch of songs that I didn't rip from cds so i don't want to just only listen to ALE files at home, i'd like to somehow be able to switch between the two versions of all the songs that I do have the 2 copies of. I think I can handle that with a simple script and something in a comment field simply indicating that it exists in both formats.

I am wondering if there are ANY ways that I could automatically keep both copies of these songs in playlists that I create? Are there any applescripts that already exist to help with any of this?

Anyway, thanks guys, this place is awesome!

[grrr223]

I LOVE smart playlists! I have several hundred I think. I have them for different years, decades, All Music Guide tones, etc.

For my iPod
Anyway...what I have always wanted to do, instead of limiting the size of my smart playlists, is to be able to select a random 30 gig chunk of my (65 gig music collection) and just let the smart playlists on the iPod choose from there. With this applescript "Uncheck Same Tracks in Library", all I have to do is:

• Uncheck all the songs in my library
• Go to a smart playlist that randomly selects 30gig of music, excluding Apple Lossless
• Check all the songs in the 30 gig playlist
• Then I can tell the iPod to only add checked songs!!! It's perfect.

This gives me 2 places that I can add some selectivity, either the smart playlist, or the script that does the checking and unchecking.

For Home Listening
That's the easy part, the other half of my desires is that when I'm listening at home I play the Apple Lossless version IF there is one, which means that I can't just exclude all AAC files because I don't plan on ripping all my music as Apple Lossless, only ones I feel deserve it.

Soo...I think if I put something in the comments, or probably in the BPM field (I don't use it for anything), it will indicate that I have 2 versions of the same song, so that when I am listening at home, I can repeat the above procedure, but the smart playlist will be

• Check all the songs in my library
• Go to a smart playlist that selects songs that are AAC AND have 123 in BPM
• Uncheck all the songs in this playlist
• Enjoy through my new Airport Express

or something like that.


Thanks for your help, you sparked my imagination!!! It's so simple yet so powerful, very Apple-like, I love it!