iTunes never looked so good

bigaudiofanatic

Well after getting my new laptop last week. I decided it was time to get my library even more organized and get all the album artwork. At the same time make sure all music was in lossless and make a note of any albums that were not. Today I finished the final album artwork that was missing. Using just google and some time and also using the trial of tune up. I sort of get a sense of relaxation when I can scroll threw and see all the album artwork.

That is all

Fireman32

I have to do the same thing. Just have to find the time.

jgido759

It does make it so much easier in the long run if you add the artwork when you initially rip the media.

bigaudiofanatic

Ya but wen you just want the music to get onto the computer and do not have a fast internet connection like the college than you do not take the time to look for them.

reeltrouble1

bigaudiofanatic wrote: »

Ya but wen you just want the music to get onto the computer and do not have a fast internet connection like the college than you do not take the time to look for them.

lemme guess.....english major.......neato stuff there BAF.

RT1

bigaudiofanatic

Oh well I was at lunch just typing away and talking. Was not worrying about grammar.

audiobliss

I guess that means you're always eating and just typing away and talking, not worrying about grammar?

I need to go through my iTunes library and clean up really badly! I've added so many songs here lately, all in different formats, that I need to go through. AND when I re-ripped everything this last time I STUPIDLY let iTunes do it, and it totally botched up all the album names and even a few song names. I think I'm going to try and free up a HD and re-rip (or, rather, re-re-re-re-re-rip) in .WAV. Again. I think that's how I did it the first time.

I briefly contemplated running RockBox on my iPod so I could play back .flac files, but I'm not sure if it's really worth all that hassle. I'm really eyeing a 240GB HD upgrade for my iPod! But that's quite a ways and a lot of money in the future.

bigaudiofanatic

I never rip in any other format but apple lossless. Simply no compression and that's it. That way I never have to worry about what format is it in. Plus I always rip from original cd's

audiobliss

I tried Apple lossless when I first got my iPod, but didn't have sufficient HD space then. How does it compare size-wise with .WAV? The majority of my music is from CD, but in the last few weeks I was able to copy over a TON of music from friends, so all of that's in a mess in separate folders, needing a little tender love & care with some hardcore reorganization.

bigaudiofanatic

Wav, mp3 they are all compressed in some way. I never fooled with wav that much one reason because I am a mac user. But just simply I have the HD space and wanted the best. IMO there is no better format than lossless.

Right now my music library is over 6,000 "6,332" songs and taking up a total of 140 GB's.

audiobliss

What the crap? WAV is not compressed. It is exactly as the information is on the CD.

I agree, lossless is the way to go if you have the necessary HD space. I have 4796 items in my iTunes library right now, so that would take up quite a bit of space if they weren't compressed. They're all in MP3 at 320kbps, but it only takes up 39.3GB.

John30_30

audiobliss wrote: »

I tried Apple lossless when I first got my iPod, but didn't have sufficient HD space then. How does it compare size-wise with .WAV? The majority of my music is from CD, but in the last few weeks I was able to copy over a TON of music from friends, so all of that's in a mess in separate folders, needing a little tender love & care with some hardcore reorganization.

Typically about 5% bigger than a comparable flac file, which averages about half the size of the original wav, give or take depending on how much audio information is in the track.

audiobliss

John30_30 wrote: »

Typically about 5% bigger than a comparable flac file, which averages about half the size of the original wav, give or take depending on how much audio information is in the track.

That actually sounds like a really good balance - lossless quality and compressed footprint.

The thing that always stops me from ripping to such formats is the lack of flexibility in converting to other formats, burning to CDs, sharing with friends, etc.

John30_30

audiobliss wrote: »

That actually sounds like a really good balance - lossless quality and compressed footprint.

The thing that always stops me from ripping to such formats is the lack of flexibility in converting to other formats, burning to CDs, sharing with friends, etc.

No, that's just not so. In windows, you can burn flacs & just about any codec ( dunno about apple m4a) straight to cd with foobar, and you can convert to just about any other format with dbpoweramp.
What's not optimal about burning a lossy format like mp3 or apple aac to cd is that it has lost audio data, but I understand sometimes you just want the cd format for the player. Keep in mind it's no longer factory cd equivalent.

Lossless codec to lossless, no problem, just d/l and install the codec from Spoon's website. Flac, monkeys, shorten, Apple lossless, you name it.

Lossy to lossless codec is just stupidity because, but it will still do the conversion.

Doom9, that used to be the forum that had all that info.

Edit: foobar is a good convertor, but I was thinking of burrrn, not foobar as doing a straight burn to cd from any compressed format.

audiobliss

I use foobar off and on for playback. I do remember using dbpoweramp a while back; incredibly awesome program.

I'll send files, new albums I like, etc to friends over AIM, and I guess I just don't want the hassle of having to convert from some esoteric file format when sending to someone who never even looks at what format a song may be in. Though, thinking back, there really was no hassle involved with using dbpoweramp.

concealer404

Yeah dbpoweramp and winamp are all i ever use when messing with music on a PC. dbpoweramp is in fact, awesome.

heiney9

Media Monkey

http://www.mediamonkey.com/

John30_30

BlueFox wrote: »

This only applies to files copied from CD to the computer. Apple's iTune store does not sell lossless files in any format.

That's what I was thinking. And it's still DRM'd also, yes?

Therefore, iTunes store is definitely not quite ready for prime time if it's not lossless.

xsmi

John30_30 wrote: »

That's what I was thinking. And it's still DRM'd also, yes?

Therefore, iTunes store is definitely not quite ready for prime time if it's not lossless.

In the Apple Lossless format the music is no longer DRM'd. Apple's uncompressed format is AIFF which was actually co-developed with Sun. If you did use Apple Lossless format you would only have to use one app for all of your needs. Although the other apps have lots of cool features if you are trying to do things quickly wouldn't the ease of one app speed things up?

John30_30

xsmi wrote: »

In the Apple Lossless format the music is no longer DRM'd. Apple's uncompressed format is AIFF which was actually co-developed with Sun.

Yes, obviously. I was referring to tunes d/l'ed from Apple online, which are lossy to boot. Doro was mentioning in another thread how convenient and unified iTunes and the iStore iis, but these are the drawbacks. Lossy + DRM + an average D.A.P.

xsmi wrote: »

If you did use Apple Lossless format you would only have to use one app for all of your needs. Although the other apps have lots of cool features if you are trying to do things quickly wouldn't the ease of one app speed things up?

Depends on what you want to use for your goto. If you base everything around an iPod and iTunes, then iTunes, etc. will be the way to go. That's exactly what Apple want. 1 stop shopping at their store.
They've pwned the world like Microsoft did to them with P.C.'s.

Take the iPod and iStore out of the equation, you got a different ballgame.

audiobliss

Music purchased from iTunes used to be DRM protected MP3 128kbps. However, they've since gone to "Plus", which is DRM free 256kbps MP3. You can 'upgrade' your old songs to 'Plus' for a small fee, and what you purchase on there now is all 'Plus'.

John30_30

audiobliss wrote: »

Music purchased from iTunes used to be DRM protected MP3 128kbps. However, they've since gone to "Plus", which is DRM free 256kbps MP3. You can 'upgrade' your old songs to 'Plus' for a small fee, and what you purchase on there now is all 'Plus'.

Ah, right. Well, MP3 128 is dogpotty*, it's an antique leftover from the napster days. 256 is better, but AAC is much better- and still, that's lossy.

So you choose your poison as far as audio dropoff. Add that all up, then you factor in hearing loss, the algorithm gets personal and intense.:D


* Of course, for audiobooks and spoken word, it's totally excellent.

audiobliss

heiney9 wrote: »

Media Monkey

http://www.mediamonkey.com/

So I downloaded it to give it a try again, imported all my music, everything worked just fine. But it won't actually play any of my songs, even ones I know have no DRM.

All my music is on a separate (internal) HD labeled "A:". I searched their forums briefly and it seems to be a common issue, though I'm not sure what the particular culprit is. Some say it won't play from a drive labeled "A:". How can I relabel it? Or is it something else?

audiobliss

I just copied a song over from A to B and C, and it'll play from B and C just fine, so I guess it is the drive letter that's being the issue. How can I relabel it, and is that going to create problems with other programs? I have it named My Documents, and all my documents are on A.

Thanks!!

audiobliss

So, very confusing. I get different results depending on how I navigate to the song from the file tree on the left side of MM. If I access a song from Artists or Albums or Genres, etc, it won't work. But if I scroll down and select drive A and then My Music, etc, it'll play everything that's not protected.

Is this just still a manifestation of it ignoring A, or something else?