Dual iTunes Library

[admin_exported]

I have my current library with compressed music for my iPod touch.

I would like to have a seperate library of uncompressed to stream to my AV amp in the living room.

Is it possible to set up 2 music libraries of exactly the same songs, either through iTunes or another way?

 

[margetti]

Ooh spooky - I was about to post the same question!

I'm currently ripping to lossless using dbpoweramp (making use of AccurateRip - given up on iTunes being reliable enough on the less than pristine cd's), then importing twice into separate libraries (one lossless, the other converting to AAC) - can't help but think there must be a better way (it's very time consuming and very tedious)!

 

[Anonymous]

I was thinking one way in iTunes might be to rip all my CD lossless then assign them to a seperate playlist and drag and drop as I won't.

Well will probably be easier having my mina library lossless then an iPod playlist with the compressed stuff on.

Only problem I see is that if I do this when I put the playlist on my iPod it will be all together rather than seperated in to different Artists.

 

[professorhat]

Very simple to create two libraries - if you are using a Mac, hold down the Option (or alt) key as you open iTunes and you'll get a prompt to create a new Library or choose one of the existing ones you have already created.

If you're using a PC, hold down the Shift key when opening iTunes for the same prompt.

Unfortunately, you have a library of compressed music - there's no way of creating another library from this to make an uncompressed library. The only thing you can do is create a new one using the method above and reimport all your CDs using one of the lossless formats.

If on the other hand your library was uncompressed, you could then create a compressed version of all the songs in that library, export these from this library, create a new library using the method above, import the compressed versions of the songs into this library and finally delete the compressed versions from your original library. Sounds more complicated, but is actually a hell of lot easier than reimporting everything!

 

[Anonymous]

I do this as well.
Have you got the DB power amp dual encoder plug in?
Ie you can rip to lossless flac and mp3 at the same time with one rip.
You can specify the folder to put each type of file in.
I use Winamp for FLac's and itunes for MP 3. I use lame and 256 (approx) variable bit rate.
Very happy with this system.