becseattle;567580 Wrote: > Your answer was very helpful, thanks. I was hoping to keep my SB > integrated with iTunes libraries since I use them for Iphones etc.
You can of course. There is a SbS option to "use ITUNES" integration. I've never thought this was particularly a good idea as it seems to create other issues with SbS. I have several ipods and my wife and I both use iPhones. And I use iTUNES for all these units. But it doesn't require any integration. I can point both SbS AND iTUNES to the same music library (internal disk, external USB drive, etc.) if I want WITHOUT integration. So one doesn't need two copies of your music library. Now, in my case I don't want lossless files on my ipods (waste of space) but I do want lossless files for my SbS at home. So I have the FLAC library for my SbS and an mp3 library (or you could use aac) for my ipods. I have quite a few files that are ONLY mp3/aac. So those files only exist in one place. For example, For SbS (I point it to the music library as "g:\all music\" under this directory are two directories: g:\all music\FLAC\artist\album\... g:\all music\mp3aac_only\artist\album... For Itunes I point it to a music library called "g:\all music\mp3aac_only\ (same directory as one of above lower level directories) And then I have another directory called g:\FLACtoMP3\artist\album\.... Anything in here is a copy of what is already in the FLAC directory. Within itunes, I use FILE>ADD DIRECTORY option to point at this directory and add to my ITUNES library. So my itunes library has only lossy versions of everything (mp3 or aac) and my SbS library has FLAC (lossless) versions where available. becseattle;567580 Wrote: > I was also looking for something a little more Mac friendly- is there a > real problem just ripping in iTunes and Apple lossless. Are there > really many errors compared with with EAC? I haven't run into problems > with this, but have not looked critically. The link I provided had a discussion of MAC rippers (XLD I think was one of them). Haven't used these. No there are not a lot of problems with using itunes and apple lossless. Lossless is lossless, so you can always easily convert from apple losses to FLAC (or other lossless) anytime in the future with a few mouse clicks. Many would argue that itunes ripper is not as secure (ability to do bit-perfect rips) as other available rippers. But for disks in good shape one is likely OK with itunes 99% of the time (note I've had more issues with BRAND NEW disks than some of my 20 year old disks that I've played 100s of times). You probably should at least use the most secure/error checking option within the itunes ripping options. It takes longer but will at least report errors to you when found. The real missing piece in itunes is use of accuraterip. This allows you to automatically compare your rip to others (maybe 100s of others). This allows for fast, secure ripping with a confirmation that your rip is identical to X number of other people who ripped the same disk. Again, depending on how "critical" you are of your ripping and tagging approach, itunes is likely fine. Most people I know rip happily on itunes in the least secure setting to 128k and never look back. I suspect this is why Squeezeboxes even have the itunes integration: So the many itunes users could simply check this box and start using SbS. In my case, I want to rip ONCE, be confident that I have a perfect rip, with tags and art just the way I want it. So extra effort up front is worth it to me. becseattle;567580 Wrote: > It did not occur to me to use FLAC, is there an advantage to this? Also > why do you mess with the tags etc, so much? Isn't everything indexed > and tagged in iTunes? Advantage to FLAC is that SB players deal with this as a NATIVE format. For me, I prefer FLAC as well because it seems to be the standard for lossless and is not tied to a particular company. Why do I mess with tags? Oh boy, I could write a dissertation on this. Itunes deals with basic, common tags just fine. And if itunes has tagged 100% of your tracks correctly you either are very lucky, have very few, common CDs, or both. ;-) Again, itunes does just fine most of the time. But sometimes if one is having issues with SbS music library, etc., it is often a hidden tag, etc. You may not be able to find this within itunes. But something like mp3tag is very useful. Bottom line, if you are happy with itunes and apple lossless, and the SbS/itunes integration works as expected for you, then it is a perfectly reasonable approach, to (1) rip to Apple Lossless format with Itunes (using its most secure/error checking option, and (2) use this library for your SbS and itunes. If you want lossy for itunes, just create a separate directory of lossy versions of all the songs. I assume itunes can create AAC versions of your apple lossless files. Put these in a different directory and point itunes to that directory as your music library. You can keep the apple lossless on an external harddrive and point SbS at that drive for use in SbS. My primary message to you is to read, read, read about all these things. 2 or 3 years ago this was all a foreign language to me. I'm trying to save you the lesson that I went through (I thought 192 CBR mp3 would be good enough for anything and had no clue what a "tag" actually did). So I slowly but surely ripped 4 or 5 thousand CDs. I've since learned a lot more (and technology has gotten better along with disk space getting cheaper). So I've now been on a project to rerip those 4 to 5 thousand CDs. Not fun! I've learned a lot on this forum, mp3tag forum, and hydrogenaudio.org forum. http://www.anytag.de/forums/ http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php -- garym ------------------------------------------------------------------------ garym's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=17325 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=81007 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
