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iTunes newb - Archive quality, gapless and compilations?

M

MacBunter

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 4, 2010
10
0
Hi folks

Apologies if some of these questions are FAQs but I'd be grateful if someone could help me out with the following points or point me to a guide with some answers in please.

I'm a new iPod owner and not used iTunes before. 99% of what I will carry on my iPod touch will be ripped from my own original CDs. I have access to lots of HDD space on my home network and intended to rip the CDs using a lossless format (Apple Lossless or wav any difference?) setting in iTunes. This is so that I won't ever have to re-rip the CDs (approx. 400) no matter what end compression might be available in the future. However, Apple lossless or wav will burn through iPod space so ideally I want to compress the resultant rips for use on my 64gb iPod touch. Can iTunes be set up for this, or do I need to do some manual shenanigans to sort this out? What are recommended settings (most listening will be on Etymotic in ear headphones).

Next question is about gapless playback; my old MP3 player had a technique to avoid the gaps between tracks introduced into MP3s during the encoding process. How do I do this with an iPod and iTunes?

Lastly, when I said I was new to iTunes that's a slight lie, I have used it before to load some music onto my wife's Nano. But compilations always send me apoplectic because the iTunes/iPod way of listing stuff means you end up with hundreds of artists with only one track by each artist. I'd rather just have one artist listed for a compilation album (e.g. Ministry of Sound etc.) so how do I manage that please.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Regards

MacBunter
 
MacBunter said:
I have access to lots of HDD space on my home network and intended to rip the CDs using a lossless format (Apple Lossless or wav any difference?) setting in iTunes.
Click to expand...

Not sure that wav supports much in the way of tagging, let alone album artwork, but others might be able to expand on that. Apple Lossless compresses files to about 60% of the size of wav or aiff files.

MacBunter said:
However, Apple lossless or wav will burn through iPod space so ideally I want to compress the resultant rips for use on my 64gb iPod touch. Can iTunes be set up for this, or do I need to do some manual shenanigans to sort this out? What are recommended settings (most listening will be on Etymotic in ear headphones).
Click to expand...

Good news: iTunes finally supports on-the-fly encoding and downsampling from your high bitrate files to compressed files solely on your iPod and keeps track of play count etc. Bad news: only one option right now, 128 AAC. Enable it in the iPod settings within iTunes when your iPod is plugged in


MacBunter said:
Next question is about gapless playback; my old MP3 player had a technique to avoid the gaps between tracks introduced into MP3s during the encoding process. How do I do this with an iPod and iTunes?
Click to expand...

8-9 times out of 10, if the CD is recognised by Gracenote, then it'll tag the ripped files as gapless automatically. If not, then select the ripped files and get info on them and then change that setting.

MacBunter said:
I'd rather just have one artist listed for a compilation album (e.g. Ministry of Sound etc.) so how do I manage that please.
Click to expand...

I'd tend to avoid that because it can bring problems of its own. Probably best to use the Album Artist tag on any files you wish to categorise in this way.
 
edited as Blue Velvet got there first

"I suppose if you were very picky, you could have 2 iTunes library folders...one ripped in lossless, and one transcoded to 320.

If anyone knows of a more elegant solution, I'd like to know."


edit as Blue Velvet got there first
 
Blue Velvet said:
I'd tend to avoid that because it can bring problems of its own. Probably best to use the Album Artist tag on any files you wish to categorise in this way.
Click to expand...

Could you elaborate a bit on how to do this please?

Many thanks.

Bill
 
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