iTunes, Two Libraries, AAC/Lossless, Internal/External

[lorenwade]

Okay guys... I will lay this out so you can understand.

What you need to know:

I have an iMac and all of my music is on it in lossless format. I also just purchased an external harddrive.

What I want to do:

I want all of my lossless files on the external hard drive (for archival purposes... please no format wars!) in one library.

I want all of those same files in AAC on my iMac in another library.

What I am going to do:

I want to keep all of my music in lossless on the external and use the AAC on my iMac for our iPhones.

Help? Haha.

EDIT: Just fyi, I've done lots of searching, but have found no definitive answer or step-by-step process in doing all of this.

 

[miles01110]

All you need to do is hold down the option key when you click on the iTunes icon to make a new library.

 

[JonHimself]

Since you're only using the lossless copy for archival purposes I'll tell you what I do. It probably isn't the most efficient method or even the best but it's worked for me. I keep a copy of my lossless files on my NAS drive (same as an external drive for this example). I then keep AAC copies on my mbp. I also have iTunes set to manage my music so that any imported items are copied into the iTunes folder (I'm not sure if that will factor in or not but figure I would mention it).

Process
- Rip CD in iTunes as lossless copy
- Add/edit relavent metadata (ie removing disk number, changing genre, etc).
- I then hit 'apple + r' on one of the newly imported songs to revel the tracks in Finder
- Move up a directory (apple + up.. i think) and copy the album folder onto my desktop*
- Back into iTunes, change my settings so that importing is to AAC
- Select the recently imported lossless files and create AAC version
- When finished I select the lossless version in iTunes and delete them (because you moved the first folder you will not see the 'delete and remove from itunes or just remove from itunes' message)
- I take the folder on my desktop and rename it from 'album' to 'band - album [year]' and copy that folder onto my external drive

* the reason that I take the time to move the files and folder out of the itunes directory is because if I didn't, the new AAC files would end up beeing 'artist - song name 1.m4a'.. which wouldn't change it in iTunes but would bother me on an OCD level.

It's annoying, yes... but it works for me and since you're in a similar situation perhaps it'll help.

 

[lorenwade]

JonHimself, that post was extremely helpful. Thanks a lot, those are the kind of tips I'm looking for. Thanks so much. Any further tips by others would be appreciated.