Managing digital libraries

[REBNZ]

Got a challenge I have been grappling with for the last week.

 

I have just reripped 850 odd CD's into Apple Lossless to play through the stereo at home. This amounts to around 240Gb of disk space and is all good in terms of playing through the Sonos. However, 240Gb don't fit on my iPod.

 

This raises a couple of interesting questions. First off is I need to convert all of these so some sort of compressed file type so I can listen in the car etc via iPod. This is easy enough to do in iTunes but which compression format to use to give best bang for the Kb?

 

Also, how do I manage two copies of each file? I can set up a smart playlist in iTunes to 'not' copy lossless to iPod, but I can't set up a smart playlist in Sonos to only copy Lossless, and I don't want both versions to show up in Sonos.

 

I am currently left with managing two iTunes libraries, one lossy and one lossless which is a less than satisfying experience.

 

Have any members cracked this in an easy to use way?

 

Cheers

[Guest]

Two possible solutions:

 

1. Do you really need to have your entire music library on your iPod? I have an iPod Classic (160GB) and some 530GB in my iTunes library. I don't need everything on the iPod, so I manually selected the music that is most important to me.

 

2. iTunes 9 and 10 have the ability to down-convert on the fly while copying music to your iPod. It does this at 128kps AAC files,which may be good enough for in a noisy car. (I'd prefer it if iTunes offers a 256 option too). This way you can get a lot more music on your iPod.

[stuarth]

 

REB;134228 wrote:

which compression format to use to give best bang for the Kb?

 

Second Michael's advice about letting iTunes do the down-sizing for you, as files are copied (yes would be good to have a 256 option here, Apple)

 

The 'iTunes plus' encoding of 256 kps AAC (variable bitrate) seems to be a good compromise between file size and SQ for iPod listening.

 

Supposedly AAC files sound better than MP3 files of the same bitrate.

[REBNZ]

Brilliant... Trying it now... Might take a while to "on the fly" transcode 12000 tracks.

 

Thanks a bunch

[Guest]

Allow a few hours, I suspect.