How best to import music to itunes for use on a variety of devices

[dave_k]

Good Evening,

I have recently purchased an iPhone 5 and an iMac, my philosophy being to simplify my computing and technology set up. I have a CD collection which a couple of years ago I ripped to FLAC. My wife has on her windows laptop a variety of mp3 music. She also has an iPod shuffle but has necer really used it and itunes. It is several years since I last used iTunes as my media player and I imagine things have changed.

What I want to do is have all of the CD based music in high quality on the computer, and whatever mp3 files we have will just have to remain as they are. I would like to have music on my phone and on my wife's shuffle but the lossless formats will limit the number of tracks that can be stored on each device, so perhaps a lower quality library of all music is also required.

Can someone advise me how best to achieve this? I have searched the forum and have got some advice but not recent.

In the future we will probably get an iPad and an airport express or other way of streaming music to our Q Acoustics speakers.

I am prepared to re-rip all CDs if there is a more convenient format to use.

Many thanks,

David

 

[superchiwawa]

Easy. Create a new itunes library and Rip everything to ALAC (Apple Lossless), or convert your existing FLACs to ALAC (you'll need a thrid party tool for this). Pro: you'll have no compatibility issues between your devices and clean audio. (and install something like Amarra - it's an itunes plugin for audiophiles). When you load music onto your phone/ipod, there's an option to convert the music that's going on your ipod to AAC (256kbps I think). Tick that and you got what you're looking for. Simple and Minimum hassle . Cons: well it'll take a bit longer to load music onto your iphone/pod, and if ever you're want to read your library from say a network streamer for your example, not all of them are compatabile with ALAC files (not uncommon though, but FLAC is more widespread i think).

Alternatively, you can manage 2 separate libraries, (hold alt/option when lauching itunes) but that's gonna require more manual fiddling and 1.5 times the disk space

Note: if you wanted to stick to FLAC there's also a 3rd party FLAC plugin for itunes, but i don't know if this will let you re-encode for your iphone/pod in itunes as above. Or you could have one FLAC library and one mp3/AAC library. ti'll take up more space and you'll have to keep them synced manually (should you want them to be so).

 

[byakuya83]

David, further to that you can sign up to Match and iTunes will convert those MP3 files to AAC, the default format for iPods etc. What's more, those AAC files will be 256kbps VBR, which sound fantastic.

 

[MajorFubar]

You can bulk-convert all your FLACs to a different format such as Apple Lossless without having to re-rip them. I don't know how many CDs you've ripped so far, but I know if someone told me I had to re-rip all of mine in a different format I'd probably opt for suicide as a more-pleasurable option.