I'm redoing my entire iTunes library

[rdowns]

I told my self I was going to do this when I moved. Here we are 6 months later and not done. Now you've got me thinking about it again. Thanks, I think.

14,000 songs seems like quite the project. I only have 3,900. Most of my library is in 192 AAC and I would like to bump it up to 256 or maybe 320. Maybe my new 500GB drive arriving tomorrow will spur me to action. Re-do iTunes library and set up the drive on my Airport Base Station.

PS: I wouldn't recommend doing AAC, I would go with MP3 format.

May I ask why?

 

[bartelby]

I'm planning on getting a large external HD soon and reripping all my cds at a higher quality. It'll be a joyous week or so ripping >1,200 cds...

 

[Tilpots]

If you go lossless, you'll never have to do this again. You're building this collection that should last the rest of your life. People have never truly been able to build a workable lifelong collection. Digital files have the possibility to be around forever. 8 tracks went the way of the Dodo, LP's became antiques and your CD's become drink coasters.

If you put in all this time and effort to your music collection, make it last a lifetime.


Also, for my iPod and my MBP, I created a separate library for lossy files. Multiple libraries do need better support from iTunes, IMHO, but it does work well enough.

 

[themoonisdown09]

I think I've finally decided to go with the Apple Lossless format instead of 256-Kbps AAC. I will have to look into getting something like Drobo or buying more external hard drives now.

Good thing I only did 25 CDs last night. I wont' be able to do any work on it tonight because of the 2009 BCS Championship game at 8pm. I'll guess I'll start over on Friday.

 

[Primejimbo]

I really wish with what I knew now about Ipods I knew with back when I 1st got it.
I have over 5000 songs now from CD's and I'm not sure what format they are, but it's whatever the default is. I think it sounds ok, but maybe when I find my CD's here and there, I may redo mine.

 

[themoonisdown09]

I really wish with what I knew now about Ipods I knew with back when I 1st got it.
I have over 5000 songs now from CD's and I'm not sure what format they are, but it's whatever the default is. I think it sounds ok, but maybe when I find my CD's here and there, I may redo mine.

If you are using iTunes, you can check the format that the songs are in by right-clicking on the track and selecting the Get Info option. From there, select the first tab and it will list the song attributes.

 

[Primejimbo]

If you are using iTunes, you can check the format that the songs are in by right-clicking on the track and selecting the Get Info option. From there, select the first tab and it will list the song attributes.

THANKS! When I get home tonight I'll have a look at this.

 

[Sky Blue]

albumartexchange.com is a great site for high quality artwork.

 

[Tilpots]

I think I've finally decided to go with the Apple Lossless format instead of 256-Kbps AAC.

I think you'll be pleased, not while you're doing it, but definitely when you're done.

Also, alot of companies like HP are coming up with home media servers. I thought Apple would have this week, but no dice. Anyway, maybe have a look at this thread, people have all kinds of storage set-ups.

 

[sushi]

The only problem with Apple Lossless or any lossless format is the file size. I encoded a 4:15 song using 256-Kbps AAC and it was 8 MB. I encoded the same song with Apple Lossless and it was 30.4 MB!

For me, I encode with 256Kbps MP3, true stereo and constant rate. I can play these songs on most everything.

In the early days, I tried dual encoding methods. One for the HD and one for iPod and other MP3 devices. Then I went to one encoding method for everything.

While AAC is good, it won't play on everything out there. So for me, it's MP3.

Space wise, the AIFF file takes about 10MB per minute. My MP3 encoding takes about 1MB per minute. So a song that is 4:30 long would be 45MB in AIFF after encoding to MP3 is 4.5MB. Roughly speaking of course. But good enough for my needs. Plus I like being able to carry more music on my iPod than if I used AIFF or Apple Lossless.

Yeah I had to really cut down what I carry to make it work at first. But to be completely honest I'm okay with that. I was carrying a lot of stuff I never listened too. Now I can shuffle and hear stuff I really want to listen too.

When I re-encode my library (somehow some songs were deleted a year ago by accident), I am only going to encode those songs that I really like and skip the rest. So out of 100 CDs, I may only encode a couple hundred songs instead of close to 1,000. Time to weed out the chaff.

I have had the Drobo for 5 month's now. I love the ease of use. It really is as simple as advertised. Just add a drive as it get's full and keep on going. The not having to match drive size's is nice just toss in any SATA drives you have laying around the house and you're good to go. I did worry a bit about the "what if" of a complete failure, but I figure no HDD is fail proof. I tried to cover my ass by buying my HDD's that I loaded into the Drobo from different batches so that if I picked a bad batch I wouldn't have all of them fail at once. I have been thinking about buying a second Drobo to use as a backup of the first Drobo, I really do love the little guy.

Glad to hear that your Drobo is working well for you.

I'm concerned about their proprietary format should multiple HDs crash at the same time.

Do like the way they look and operate -- other than the concern above.

albumartexchange.com is a great site for high quality artwork.

Good to know. Thanks.

 

[c-Row]

I bought myself a 1TB external drive to store all my Apple Lossless files. My 16.000 songs library takes appx. half of it right now and should be able to grow a bit further in the future.

And thanks for the suggestion of Drobo - that guy looks interesting!

 

[Blue Velvet]

If you go lossless, you'll never have to do this again. You're building this collection that should last the rest of your life.

Hence my concerns over Apple Lossless for master archival files. FLAC is open source and will be supported by someone somehow somewhere in 30 years time. It will be pretty easy to find a converter for many years to come.

FLAC for archival; Apple Lossless or AAC or whatever for using in iTunes, and whatever it evolves into or other management software and devices.

 

[dXTC]

albumartexchange.com is a great site for high quality artwork.

Another excellent site for album art and track info is Discogs.com; it's especially handy for overseas/import releases that differ from the US release, dance/electronic EPs/12"/Maxi CDs and rare items.

 

[PlaceofDis]

Hence my concerns over Apple Lossless for master archival files. FLAC is open source and will be supported by someone somehow somewhere in 30 years time. It will be pretty easy to find a converter for many years to come.

FLAC for archival; Apple Lossless or AAC or whatever for using in iTunes, and whatever it evolves into or other management software and devices.

well even more standard than FLAC would be WAV or the AIFF files themselves if you want to talk long term i think AIFF would be the single file format to last for the longest. but i do understand the concern with Apple Lossless and is why i have yet to rip a lossless version for my tracks.

 

[Blue Velvet]

well even more standard than FLAC would be WAV or the AIFF files themselves if you want to talk long term i think AIFF would be the single file format to last for the longest.

True, but until 50Gb Blu-Ray discs are a few dollars a piece, I won't bother with AIFF for archiving. I don't want to solely rely on hard drives for archival purposes; they need to be installed and hooked up to something to get the data off them, and that's before you even think about duplicating them.

Just as it was pretty simple to archive floppies onto CD when the time came, it's easier to shift files onto new media without worrying about whether the drive is sound. I store my disks pretty well in dark spaces; none of them are dissolving yet, crossed fingers.

 

[Arran]

Another excellent site for album art and track info is Discogs.com; it's especially handy for overseas/import releases that differ from the US release, dance/electronic EPs/12"/Maxi CDs and rare items.

Thanks for that. Most of my music was bought overseas. I just checked discogs and even found pics of long-gone compact cassette inlay cards. Nostalgia

 

[onehoop]

Variable Bit Rates

I started out using a low bit rate and then got some nice headphones and as a result I upped the compression to 228k VBR. I took great interest in that article--amazing that a couple of recording engineers are completely satisfied with 160k VBR! I'd thought about getting rid of my cd collection entirely (my roommate made a successful argument that vinyl is the only valuable media) and figured that I would rip them lossless first. Now I'm not so sure that it is necessary!

Here's a tip. When you are in the list or coverflow modes of the main Music library, you can add a field to the view (right click, command-click, or through the view options) with the Bit Rate. Then you can sort according to date last played before sorting by Bit Rate. In this way you can begin importing your music starting with that which will impact you the most.

My main problem with space has been movies. I wish that iTunes would allow you to save the movies in a separate location through the preferences, but I am going to need to create another library to manage that. As a result, I have kept my library on a networked drive, which causes all sorts of problems. For being the best hardware/software out there, iPod/iTunes falls well short of perfection.


M@

 

[Tilpots]

Hence my concerns over Apple Lossless for master archival files. FLAC is open source and will be supported by someone somehow somewhere in 30 years time. It will be pretty easy to find a converter for many years to come.

FLAC for archival; Apple Lossless or AAC or whatever for using in iTunes, and whatever it evolves into or other management software and devices.

I'm no digital audio engineer or anything but I believe that you should be able to convert your Apple Lossless files to AIFF, WAV or FLAC and not lose any quality, if the need should ever arise. So unless Apple and iTunes go belly up, it shouldn't be a factor. Even then, I'm sure someone will figure out a way to play/convert Apple lossless files.

So as long as you at least have a working copy of iTunes, you'll be all set, either to play your files, or to convert them to a new standard.

 

[Killyp]

Yes, Apple Lossless can be converted to any other non-lossy format (such as PCM-AIFF) without any loss in quality, and as long as iTunes is available in one form or the other, you'll be able to convert them.


TBH though, I would challenge most people to tell the difference between 256kbps AAC and Lossless on most sound systems. Really you need to be looking at the £2k+ mark on a good pair of speakers, amp and DAC or CD player before you start hearing the differences.

 

[themoonisdown09]

Yes, Apple Lossless can be converted to any other non-lossy format (such as PCM-AIFF) without any loss in quality, and as long as iTunes is available in one form or the other, you'll be able to convert them.

TBH though, I would challenge most people to tell the difference between 256kbps AAC and Lossless on most sound systems. Really you need to be looking at the £2k+ mark on a good pair of speakers, amp and DAC or CD player before you start hearing the differences.

Like other people have said, if I rip all my music as lossless, I'll never have to worry about ripping it again. If I rip it as 256-Kbps AAC, in 5 more years or so, I might have to re-rip my entire collection at a higher rate.

Right now, I don't have a $2,000 sound system, but I plan on it in the future.

As long as I'll be able to convert the Apple Lossless files into FLAC or AIFF in the future (if there's ever a reason to), then I guess I'm safe.

 

[miket019]

May I ask why?

For me, it comes down to compatibility. I like to have 100% freedom with my music. MP3 plays in all music players, all cell phones, ect...

I sometimes have to put music on my mom's cell phone, sometimes my uncle ask me to put music on his samsung player or when... well... you got the idea.

Yes I can convert the songs when needed but I don't really want to spend the time doing those things or finding out if they play AAC.

I am very happy with my music collection because it works for me and if you are happy about yours, it's all that matters.

 

[gnasher729]

I do have one question before I get too far into this project (I've already done 4 CDs!): Should I use variable bit rate (VBR) encoding?

I'd seriously recommend doing the whole importing in Apple lossless. 14,000 songs, average 20 MB, that would be about 280 GB. Not much for an external drive. If you import at 256KBit today, you will regret it in five years time and do it all again. Once it is imported, you can always convert to 256 KBit and keep the lossless files for backup.

 

[gnasher729]

I told my self I was going to do this when I moved. Here we are 6 months later and not done. Now you've got me thinking about it again. Thanks, I think.

I used two strategies to speed things up considerably: 1. Use my Mac and a cheap PC to feed them at double the speed 2. Import uncompressed because it is faster; once you have 1000 songs or so you convert everything to lossless and throw away the uncompressed files.

 

[BananaMilkshake]

Personally, I think it's more important to have the song than the album cover, even though I love having them.

 

[Consultant]

I have been importing as loseless (AIFF) for years. Perhaps you want to consider that.

Tradeoff is that I carry music on an external HD.

I use desktop drive in external enclosure to speed up importing.

Also, you probably want to get an external sound card.