iTunes import settings for an audiophile

[davievegas]

Hi there

I was hoping for some advice on which import settings to use for my first iPod. It’s a 160 GB I bought in Sept but not had chance to start playing with it yet. I bought it because it seems to have the best componants available for small portable speakers like the bose.

In iTunes it says I have a few options to import to. I have about 600 albums I have collected through the years. My new PC has a 500 GB hard drive & it won’t be used for much apart from music & photo storage & web surfing

I love my music and have decent hi fi set up at home I am happy with. However I would like to try at have all my tunes on my iPod if possible at get decent playback at home, in the car and on the move rather than having cd's everywhere

I am not too familar with IT jargon but I was hoping to get some advise on which would be the best method to import to iTunes with for the best playback. I only plan on importing them once!

Many thanks

Davie

[fracai]

If you want to import only once, you want lossless.
I'd recommend XLD over iTunes as it allows you to compare your rip against an online database (AccurateRip). It also corrects for the read offset of your CD reader.

Once you have the files ripped, you can import them into iTunes or leave them elsewhere and convert to AAC for the iPod. I use 192kbps AAC. If you're concerned about quality I suggest that you encode a few samples and perform an ABX test. If that's too much, 192 is probably fine. Heck, 128 is probably good enough.

Forget the Audiophile label. Just rip to lossless and then re-encode as technology, listening taste, and available drive space changes.

[davievegas]

Many thanks, lossless it is. I have a feeling this process is gonna take forever!!

Cheers

[fracai]

Properly ripping the CDs might take a bit, especially if you find errors and spend the time to buy replacements.
But once you have the lossless files, especially if you use Apple Lossless and let iTunes do all the work for you, the encoding is a matter of a few clicks and then walking away.

[EatsWithFingers]

I was hoping for some advice on which import settings to use for my first iPod.

[..]

I love my music and have decent hi fi set up at home I am happy with. However I would like to try at have all my tunes on my iPod if possible at get decent playback at home, in the car and on the move rather than having cd's everywhere

I've always been a bit cautious about putting lossless audio files on iPods (or any portable digital music player for that matter). The reason being that lossless files are very large, which requires more frequent disk accesses, thus potentially shortening the life of your player. It also requires more power, so your battery won't last as long.

Personally, I have two libraries. One (on an external hard drive) which has all my audio in a lossless format which I use when playing my music through my lounge hi-fi. The other is on my laptop and has all my music in 128kbps AAC which I use for putting on my iPod.

However, I only ever play my iPod through a pair of (reasonably good) headphones, and my (average) car stereo.


One of the reasons that I do not use it to play music through my hi-fi is that the output frequency range of iPods is 20Hz-20kHz. Therefore, you are losing around 15Hz from the low end, and a good 4 or 5kHz from the top end.

EDIT: I'm not sure if the frequency range point is valid with devices into which the iPod docks. It may be the case that the music files are read directly by the device and processed using its own audio circuitry, not the one in the iPod.


Finally, connection-wise for your home hi-fi, an optical cable from your Mac (or PC) is the best option.

[ThreeDee]

Although lossless files are great, they still take up a huge amount of space.

Audio CDs aren't always fully loaded with music tracks, so lets say 550MB out of 700MB (slightly more that 3/4 of the disc) is used. This is about 62.9 mins of music per disc.

600 albums * ~550MB average music disc size * .585= 193050MB =
~188.5GB of music total.

Compression of Apple Lossless is 58.5% according to HydrogenAudio (http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Lossless_comparison) testing, other lossless encoders are +/- ~3%.

HydrogenAudio recommends lossless encoding only for archiving, and things like AAC, MP3, and OGG Vorbis for portable use.

For compatibility you could use something like iTunes-LAME (http://www.blacktree.com/) and get good quality VBR MP3 results (see the HA article on LAME (http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=LAME#Recommended_encoder_settings)).

Or you could use the built-in iTunes AAC encoder at 128kbps, which is decent, or 192kbps if you want a bit more quality.

[fracai]

600 albums * ~550MB average music disc size * .585= 193050MB =
~188.5GB of music total.

Compression of Apple Lossless is 58.5% according to HydrogenAudio (http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Lossless_comparison) testing, other lossless encoders are +/- ~3%.

Peanuts!

No seriously, the price of drives has come down quite a bit over the years.
I don't think there's any reason NOT to rip CDs as lossless and convert from there. It'd be really nice if someone put out an app that maintained a lossless library and would manage the encoding of lossy files either on the fly for copying to a player or would maintain a synced lossy library.

[Anti]

I've found 256K AAC files to be the best files to use for any media player, period. They don't take much room, and it sounds pretty good.

I ripped an album in Apple Lossless and didn't notice much difference from a 256K AAC file.

[ThreeDee]

Peanuts!

No seriously, the price of drives has come down quite a bit over the years.
I don't think there's any reason NOT to rip CDs as lossless and convert from there. It'd be really nice if someone put out an app that maintained a lossless library and would manage the encoding of lossy files either on the fly for copying to a player or would maintain a synced lossy library.

I was basically saying that you could not fit all those lossless files onto the iPod, not that it would take up too much space on the HD.

[fracai]

True, but the largest iPod currently sports 160GB. That's quite close to the 600 albums you mentioned. I would expect the Touch to be close to that in a year or two.

[blubbernaut]

I take fracai's point, as iTunes can re-encode to AAC or whatever to then put on your iPod.
However, I defy anyone not using the absolute bee's-knees mega expensive audio components to tell the difference between say a 256k AAC rip and the original CD, especially if you are playing them on small speakers, in the car, on the iPod etc.

[fracai]

I'd make the same challenge for 192k AAC and frequently for 128k. Encoding has achieved quite a bit of advancement over the years.

[chris_on_hints]

Just to add my two cents - having lossless on your iPod will shorten the battery life and the slight drop in quality will be minimal if you choose the right lossy settings.

My suggestion is to use the Variable Bit Rate (VBR) setting in iTunes for AAC files. AAC is superior to MP3 (even vs LAME, which is as good as MP3 gets) so for me thats an easy choice. Going for VBR means that the bitrate increases automatically on demand, depending on the complexity of the sounds. The top two settings are 252 or 192 bits.

There have been lots of suggestions in this thread - I would chose a track you know well, rip it in WAV or Apple Lossless, then convert it in a collection of formats and bitrates (purposely chose some low ones so you can hear the errors). Sit down at your home stereo and flip between them and choose the level you are happy with. You will be surprised at how good AAC sounds.

good luck!