iPod Lossless Size and External Library

[Shortsord]

I want to upload most of my music now that I finally have a way to enjoy it, and I want to upload properly.

How big of a size difference is there between 192 encoding, which I've used so far, and lossless in terms of space? I have about 1/4 of my collection right now and it comes to around 17gb. How much would that inflate to under lossless, just in a rough estimate?

What I want to know in conjunction with this, is would my best bet be to get an external hd with fw800 and load the library on there instead? Or would I notice a slowdown or loss in quality significant enough to want to just keep it on my powerbooks hd?

Now that I think about it, is there any device that would serve this basic purpose better? It would all be hooked up to my receiver and headphone amp anyways, so is there a device that would fit in well that I don't know of? Like a squeezebox? I actually have no idea what a squeezebox does, so this is just a good excuse to find out.

Hope I made sense, thanks for help.

 

[balamw]

How much would that inflate to under lossless, just in a rough estimate?

Lossless will be about 3x larger than 192 kbps.

B

 

[WildCowboy]

Lossless will be about 3x larger than 192 kbps.

I'd agree...3-4x.

 

[Shortsord]

Alright, thanks.

So at around a few hundred gigs, would my best bet be to go with a fw800 external? Is there any major downside to an external hd setup?

Egad this place is helpful.

 

[frankblundt]

I don't think you'll notice a slowdown by having it external - in fact if the internal drive is a 5400rpm and the external a 7200 it might even speed up.

External should make no difference to the quality.

The only issue with using an external is that iTunes will reset the Music Folder location to the default (in YourHome > Music > iTunes > iTunes Music ) if you start it with the external switched off. You can work around this too by replacing the iTunes Music folder with an alias of the same name that points to your music folder on the external.

An external will need another power point and more noise (especially if you go with a fan-cooled model), and obviously it's slightly less conveniently portable, but i think that's about it