2006-05-21-13:28:23 Baylorgator: > My BB3 is on the way, and I'm ready to start ripping my CDs in a > lossless format for my home system. However, my wife has an IPOD, and > would prefer smaller files (like MP3) for that application. What is > easiest way to rip and manage files so that I can have audiophile > quality files fir the home system(flac, apple lossless, etc.) and my > wife can use smaller, compressed files on the ipod?
If she's using an iPod, are we to assume she or both of you are using iTunes? While there are tools you can use to automate the whole dual-format thing, with a little extra manual work you can maintain the two branches using only iTunes, which might be tempting for its lack of setup fiddliness. Actually, if you're using a Mac, I bet you could automate the dual encoding with AppleScript or Automator, but that's well beyond the scope of this post... > I'd like to avoid ripping all my cds twice, That's easy enough. Make sure you only rip losslessly. For universal readability (iTunes, SlimServer, everything) at the cost of not getting that 45%-or-so compression of the lossless compressions, I'd suggest just ripping to AIFF (which is like the PC's WAV, but includes full tagging internal to the file). No lossy compression, iTunes loves it, SlimServer can play it without transcoding. In your iTunes Preferences->Advanced->Importing, specify Import Using: AIFF Encoder, and make sure you check "Use error correction when reading Audio CDs". Then, to create the lower-res versions after the rips from the CD media have been done, in iTunes Preferences->Advanced->Importing, change your "Import Using:" settings to whatever you want to use for the iPod. (Since your master versions will be AIFF and the low-res versions are only intended for the iPod, you can even consider using the proprietary but high-quality AAC; but you'll probably want to go higher than the iTunes-store default 128Kbps). Select all the tracks you want to create compact iPod-ready copies of. Atop one of them, pull down the menu (right-click or ctrl-click) and select "Convert Selection to <fill in your compressed encoding>". This won't delete your uncompressed originals, it'll just create copies in the new compression. The machine will need to chew on this awhile. Oh, and when you're done, be sure you change back to AIFF before ripping another CD. > and i'd also like to make sure that when I > shuffle or select songs, artists, etc. on the SB, that I don't have to > choose between the low quality ipod versions and the high quality home > versions. Here the magic of iTunes "smart playlists" comes in. You can select on the "Kind" field (AIFF versus AAC, for example), or via bitrate, or you can choose to put a special tag in the comments. At any rate, you can create smart playlists for home play, selecting the high-res versions, and others for iPod loading. Since I only create copies of some tracks, I tag the low-rate copies with "lower-rate" in the comments, and my home-play playlists say 'Comments does not contain "lower-rate"'... Then if your SlimServer is set up to "use iTunes", it'll inherit the iTunes playlists, even the smart ones. (It won't track them on the fly, but iTunes writes a snapshot of which tracks are selected in the XML file which SlimServer eats.) _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
