Q: multiple formats in iTunes

Iwan M wrote:

 

Hi - For home usage (stream to hifi through apple TV) I use apple lossless format and as a consequence my current itunes DB contains about 150GB of lossless mustic tracks. Never been a problem as I used an IPod classic (160GB) as mobile media player in my car. Having just purchased a new car it turns out that the best option (to make optimal use of the car's features) is to use my IPhone in the car. The bottomline is - I will need to create AAC files (256kbps bitrate) of all my files in itunes.

You cna use the option to convert yrou fiels to 256 kbps AAC when syncing to the iPhone and keep only the lossless fiiles in iTunes.

Oops, my fault. It is only 128 kbps and cannot be changed.

If your really want 256 kbps and lossless, you will have to maintain two separate versions, real kind of a pain to do.

And without smart playlists, I would not even try.

This article may help you. http://www.applelossless.com/

If you already have your files as Apple Lossless and compress further according to this you will not loose anything. This is the point of using a lossless codec. All it is is compressing your file. Think of of it as stuffit or zip for audio. I had the same questions and started searching around and experimented since I am recording all my vinyl so I could use it on my ipod and in the car.

Michael Greco1 wrote:

 

This article may help you. http://www.applelossless.com/

 

If you already have your files as Apple Lossless and compress further according to this you will not loose anything.

You seemed to have misunderstood something.

Compressing again with any lossless codec (FLAC, ALAC) will do very little, if anything, to the file size. (ie. it's a waste of time)

Compressing again with lossy compression (AAC, MP3) will definitely cause much loss. After all, it is a lossy compression.

Think of of it as stuffit or zip for audio.

Correct. Howver, if you stuff/zip a file that is already stuffed/zip'd, the difference in size will be minimal if any. Likely it will be larger due to adding info about the compression.

Iwan,

The "two versions of every song" question is asked with some regularity around here,  iTunes simply does not have a good way to manage it.  You can either keep two separate libraries, or two sets of playlists, and every time you add a new song you will have to manually update.

Per Chris's suggestion, try out the auto-shrink to 128 kb/s for your iPod.  Although I have no doubt that your car has a kick-a** stereo system, a vehicle in motion is generally less than ideal as an audio environment, and you may well find that AAC/128 is suitable.

Iwan,

A conversion from FLAC to ALAC can "theoretically" be done with no loss of fidelity (as is true for any lossless conversion), but whether any particular implementation achieves that ideal, I cannot guarantee. 

My sense is that any process that ends you up with AAC files that are usable in your car will be adequate, but you can put that to the test with a few sample song files and nice stretch of highway.  As long as you are keeping the source FLACs on hand, there is no downside to experimenting.

Iwan M wrote:

 

Chris, Ed - Thanks!

 

Do you think there would be a difference in quality if I were to create AAC files from the Apple lossless format in Itunes - OR - If I create them dirrectly from the source FLAC files?

Probably very little difference between the two.

The latter would be done outside of iTunes and also exclude any quality loss the flac to alac (apple lossless) conversion might have caused?

As Ed noted, if you convert to AAC, you will have loss (and quite a bit depending on the bit rate).

AAC is a lossy compression and it does not matter how you get there, it will always discard bits.

Whether you can distinguish that loss or not is another story.

"As Ed noted, if you convert to AAC, you will have loss (and quite a bit depending on the bit rate).

AAC is a lossy compression and it does not matter how you get there, it will always discard bits.

Whether you can distinguish that loss or not is another story. -- Chris CA"

I've been following that line from Ed since way back in 2010. "Distinguish", way definitely. Extinguish complaints, that would be why I am posting here. It's 2012 and iTunes "10" now. Surely something has changed!

What really bothers me about using iTunes to make CD's for my car, is that "cloth eared" is far too kind. My wife b****** about iTunes burns not being anywhere near as good as a store bought CD. "lousy" is her usual comment.

$2500 sound system, and no store bought tracks have Jens selections I want.

What am I doing wrong? Jens Buchert is my fav (movie/concert/club tracks, most of his stuff) but outside iTunes pickings are slim and all my first choices are only found either in iTunes or YouTube (freakz). How can I improve iTunes, so I can drive without negativity? And share my iTunes tracks with friends [come to think of it - nothing to shout about now]!

Actually, I would qualify my thoughta on Ed's general take on AAC conversion to ALE.

ALE lets in about 20%more what my old man taught me is "timber". That is, there is a 1 in 5 uptake of stuff dumped in AAC when you do a conversion. Probably tripppy encoding tricks. Oh for the touch!

But it's like off-on as when  The synth slider swings  mdb's in and out. Still a little more pleasing. But no solution for fussy immediate family.

And unfortunatley burning to CD I've been converting to MP3 which cuts the depth out again. Looking for Import and Burn best practice. Something Apple avoids like the plague in all help files I've read.

Osiyo wrote:

 

Actually, I would qualify my thoughta on Ed's general take on AAC conversion to ALE.

There was no mention of converting AAC to ALE (if you mean Apple Lossless Encoding) , which would not do anything except increase file size. Quality would still be the same.

FLAC to ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) was mentioned and as ed noted, it should be the same quality.

ALE lets in about 20%more what my old man taught me is "timber". That is, there is a 1 in 5 uptake of stuff dumped in AAC when you do a conversion. Probably tripppy encoding tricks.

Since the data is thrown out when converting to AAC, converting back to ALE cannot let in 20% more, because it[s not there to begin with, so it would have to be "tripppy encoding techniques".

Looking for Import and Burn best practice. Something Apple avoids like the plague in all help files I've read.

See this -> iTunes: How to Burn a High-Quality Audio CD

which could be titled, "How to make a high quality copy of an audio CD" (but likely changed to keep it low profile and not draw the ire or the record companies).