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I'm redoing my entire iTunes library

lorenwade said:
This is what I want to do... but I want to keep the AAC on the iMac and lossless on my external hard drive. Any suggestions?
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I ripped my CDs as Apple Lossless, added all the album info/artwork to the tracks. Then I copied the album folder over to my external hard drive. Once the lossless version was on my external hard drive, I converted the songs in iTunes to AAC and deleted the lossless version.

Basically, my iTunes on my iMac contains only AAC versions of the songs and my external hard drive contains all the Apple Lossless versions.

The way I did it, I won't be listening to the lossless versions, just the AAC versions. I only ripped them that way so that if I ever wanted to go to a higher bit rate, I could without having to find the CD.

It would be nice if iTunes allowed multiple Libraries, almost how Mail allows multiple Inboxes. That way, I could view my AAC songs and my lossless songs separately and also have them stored in different locations.
 
themoonisdown09 said:
It would be nice if iTunes allowed multiple Libraries, almost how Mail allows multiple Inboxes. That way, I could view my AAC songs and my lossless songs separately and also have them stored in different locations.
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It does. Just press the Option key while opening iTunes and you'll be presented with the choice of creating a new library. That's how I've set it up. At home my iTunes points to the huge library on my network storage and on the road I switch to the songs stored on the MacBook...
 
skruggie said:
Now that I'm on this kick, I decided to get rid of all my music from "questionable" sources as well, and purchase what I want to keep either on emusic, amazon mp3, or from second hand cd's.

I'm going for library purity at this point....
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I once borrowed several dozen CDs from a friend. I have since then purchased every one of them to remain 100% legit. :)
 
bananafranco said:
It does. Just press the Option key while opening iTunes and you'll be presented with the choice of creating a new library. That's how I've set it up. At home my iTunes points to the huge library on my network storage and on the road I switch to the songs stored on the MacBook...
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Thanks! I'll have to try that when I get home.

It would be nicer if they gave you the option in the menu, rather than having to know what key to hold down when opening iTunes.
 
themoonisdown09 said:
Thanks! I'll have to try that when I get home.

It would be nicer if they gave you the option in the menu, rather than having to know what key to hold down when opening iTunes.
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I couldn't agree more. I would like to see down the side of iTunes like what I see if I have my iPhone and iPods attached. I see each one with their individual folders.

IE I could have

Lossless
...
..
.


AAC
...
..
.

And so on......

Just an idea..
 
^^^^
That's exactly what I was thinking. If it was handled like iPhones/iPods in iTunes or like multiple inboxes in Mail, it would be so much easier.
 
themoonisdown09 said:
Thanks! I'll have to try that when I get home.

It would be nicer if they gave you the option in the menu, rather than having to know what key to hold down when opening iTunes.
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Creating and managing multiple libraries is not as easy as it sounds. iTunes is pretty weak in this regard, needs much better support in SL.

Just make sure you research the ways to do it and keep your backups as far away from this process as possible.
 
Galley said:
I once borrowed several dozen CDs from a friend. I have since then purchased every one of them to remain 100% legit. :)
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I have a long way to go, but my library is starting to get pristine.

Most of my ethically questionable stuff is from borrowing cd's and from the old allofmp3 days. I purged quite a bit of it over the past couple of days, and I will continue to purge as I replace the stuff I want to keep with legal copies.

It's kind of disgusting to see how much music I have "borrowed" that I never even listened to. There is no point to having a large library if its with music I don't really have an interest in to begin with.

The ripping is going really slow - I decided on VBR 256 mp3, so it takes quite a bit of time for the rips, and then I am retagging everything with an applescript from Doug's website. And adding in the pristine artwork that I found from a website that has an excellent collection 600x600 high quality jpgs.

It will be worth it in the end, although this entire project will be neverending as I not only rip my collection and hunt for replacement cd's of the stuff I want to keep, but just going through my entire library and gutting it out to get rid of the crap.
 
I found this site - AlbumArtExchange.com

the quality and selection has been amazing. I've been replacing my cover art with their images as I've been re-ripping.
 
I use a google images a lot. I try to keep my images to 300 x 300 and under 30k. This helps (well at least I think it does) for streaming purposes. Smaller files. The pictures are not as sharp,,,,,,thou
 
rhett7660 said:
I use a google images a lot. I try to keep my images to 300 x 300 and under 30k. This helps (well at least I think it does) for streaming purposes. Smaller files. The pictures are not as sharp,,,,,,thou
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I try and make sure that my album art is either 500x500 or 600x600 and a maxiumum of 80kb. I don't do much streaming though.
 
I am in the same process in fact I just bought a Mini 2Ghz/2GB Ram/320GB HD and I am using Twin Seagate FW800 External 500GB HD's to do this because my MacBook will never have enough space. I was also at odds with the format in which to import everything because I have been in the IT field for 20 years using Windows Media MP3 @320Kbps format. I have started to re-import all 650 CD's that my entire family has, and all new music is going to be iTunes Plus format at ACC 256. Some of the music we all purchased from varied places will remain MP3 but anything new will be ACC since we all have iPod's of some flavor, most have Nano's or iPod Classic, but I have an iTouch, so the iTunes format will be best. I was googling all different responses and although everyone says Lossless is best, I will use what most of the poulous says is good enough, besides I ripped one song from an album in 3 formats and ACC sounded near perfect so that is the way I am going. So far I have completed 70-80 CD's and I am at this 2-3 days, also trying to get all the Album art and anything without art is going in the Trash Can, because I can not deal with files and no ART.


Wicked1
 
Wicked1 said:
I am in the same process in fact I just bought a Mini 2Ghz/2GB Ram/320GB HD and I am using Twin Seagate FW800 External 500GB HD's to do this because my MacBook will never have enough space. I was also at odds with the format in which to import everything because I have been in the IT field for 20 years using Windows Media MP3 @320Kbps format. I have started to re-import all 650 CD's that my entire family has, and all new music is going to be iTunes Plus format at ACC 256. Some of the music we all purchased from varied places will remain MP3 but anything new will be ACC since we all have iPod's of some flavor, most have Nano's or iPod Classic, but I have an iTouch, so the iTunes format will be best. I was googling all different responses and although everyone says Lossless is best, I will use what most of the poulous says is good enough, besides I ripped one song from an album in 3 formats and ACC sounded near perfect so that is the way I am going. So far I have completed 70-80 CD's and I am at this 2-3 days, also trying to get all the Album art and anything without art is going in the Trash Can, because I can not deal with files and no ART.


Wicked1
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I never really understood the rip to lossless. It's pointless and a huge waste of space in my opinon. Rip a quality MP3 or AAC file and be done with it, put the CD's in the back of the closet.
 
Razeus said:
I never really understood the rip to lossless. It's pointless and a huge waste of space in my opinon. Rip a quality MP3 or AAC file and be done with it, put the CD's in the back of the closet.
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But that's the thing, you won't be done with it. If you rip your entire collection of CDs as 256-Kbps MP3's or AAC files, what happens 5 years from now when you want a better quality version? You have to pull your CDs out of the closet and re-rip them at a higher bit-rate.

That's the whole reason, for me at least, for ripping as Apple Lossless. If I ever want a higher bit-rate, I can open up my lossless files and convert them to whatever I want. I will always keep the lossless version backed up on my external hard drives.
 
I'm finding that the ripping isn't the hard part, its the maintenance of the tags - keeping my playcounts, comments, etc. with the new files. Since I'm using the lame encoder and not itunes, that information isn't automatically incporporated in the files when I rip new versions. That's why its taking me 2-3 times as long throughout this never ending process.

I agree though that in a couple of years I'll probably want to go to through this whole process again as technology changes. It wasn't that long ago when I thought aac would be what I would want permanently, obviously I was wrong there.
 
When Ripping my Music, i rip at 320Kbps MP3 VBR, as its the most compatible file type, but my Library is scattered with lower and different file types, and has big holes where there is no album art :p
 
themoonisdown09 said:
But that's the thing, you won't be done with it. If you rip your entire collection of CDs as 256-Kbps MP3's or AAC files, what happens 5 years from now when you want a better quality version? You have to pull your CDs out of the closet and re-rip them at a higher bit-rate.

That's the whole reason, for me at least, for ripping as Apple Lossless. If I ever want a higher bit-rate, I can open up my lossless files and convert them to whatever I want. I will always keep the lossless version backed up on my external hard drives.
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so storing Lossless on a hard drive for 5 years does not sound at reasonable - but that's just me. Would you really be able to tell the difference in rip codings? I can do it with 128 to 192. It's a stretch for 192 to 256 to tell the difference for me, but I rip at that rate anyway. Remember, MP3/AAC encoding has only become more efficient and quality has only gone up because of bigger files, a function of bigger storage at cheaper prices.
 
Razeus said:
I never really understood the rip to lossless. It's pointless and a huge waste of space in my opinon. Rip a quality MP3 or AAC file and be done with it, put the CD's in the back of the closet.
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Or rip them once at lossless, and be able to sell or give away the cds - and be free of them. Depends if people are attached to the physical medium, or just want a digital library of music and be done with the original discs.

It's a pita,but you only have to do it once. Drives are getting cheaper all the time, and bigger, making a HD backup of your cds feasible, alongside using lossless as the main library, and getting rid of the discs as you know you've got your music at an equal quality to the original disc.

Depends what your music set up is - size of library, HD space, backup HD space, and whether you play primarily through hi fi or ipod, along with what style of music.
 
Razeus said:
so storing Lossless on a hard drive for 5 years does not sound at reasonable - but that's just me.
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Hard drives are very cheap now, so I'm not worried about space. Also, storing 1,000 CDs on a single hard drive takes up a lot less space than 1,000 physical CDs in my closet.

Razeus said:
Would you really be able to tell the difference in rip codings? I can do it with 128 to 192. It's a stretch for 192 to 256 to tell the difference for me, but I rip at that rate anyway. Remember, MP3/AAC encoding has only become more efficient and quality has only gone up because of bigger files, a function of bigger storage at cheaper prices.
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It all depends on what I'm listening to the music with. If I'm listening to music with laptop speakers, TV speakers, iMac speakers... then no, I can't really tell the difference.

If I'm listening to it with my sound system, then yes, I can tell a big difference.
 
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