Questions about iTunes

Don't archive uncompressed. Use a lossless compressed format such as FLAC or Apple Lossless (ALE). Warning, FLAC is not supported on iTunes but can easily be ripped using other (and IMHO better) rippers such as Max or XLD (my favorite). I guess the main reasons for preferring FLAC (open source so many developers) over ALE have dimished since Apple released the code and these days you don't absolutely have to use something written by Apple to use ALE. I think both rippers below also rip to ALE and what's nice is they don't have to add all the files to iTunes if all you are doing is archiving the files to different drives.

X Lossless Decoder: Lossless audio decoder for Mac OS X - http://tmkk.pv.land.to/xld/index_e.html - Tip for using: To change most settings you have to go through preferences.

Max CD ripper - http://sbooth.org/Max/

People (okay, rabid audiophiles) will fuss about lossless but I did the wave inversion test thing for FLAC and it came out flat which is good enough for me.

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Abba listed twice in iTunes. Do you really mean you have duplicate files in iTunes? If you do you may have ripped in two different formats. If you mean it asked you to choose from several listings for labels, that is because somebody entered the same album (or two slightly different versions of the same album) multiple times in the Gracenote database and it is asking you to decide which one you want to use for labels. You need to ask very specific questions here because many general descriptions have multiple interpretations, and answers.

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If you must go for uncompressed, go for AIFF. I bet 99.999% of the people who say they can hear a difference are dreaming, and if you are in the other 0.001% then I just don't know. AIFF supports tags which WAV does not and it's not uncommon to see posts here where people talk about having to rebuild their library at some stage and they get a bunch of generic filenames for tracks. You can get around it to some extent by having all the data as part of the (very long) file name but I figure just go the easy route.

macnerd48 wrote:

I I read on the 'net that a backup copy of .wav loses its metadata,

WAV files don't lose metadata because WAV files don't have any tags to hold the metadata to begin with.

The metadata is contained in the application (iTunes, Windows Media Player, whatever).

AIFF does have tags to hold the metadata.

Not having a Windows computer I don't know how well ALE is supported in Windows. Certainly iTunes for Windows will support it. I don't know if Windows Media player does.

ALE is also lossless and compressed. Apart from whatever audiophile arguments there are for one or the other the main choice comes down to convenience.

FLAC is its own thing. I play FLAC files with a variety of non-Apple players, such as VLC.

Look at "kind" to see the format of the various files. When you rip a CD using two different settings iTunes wil make a separate file for the different versions, but they will of course have identical labeling except for "kind".

By the way, Max isn't a codec, it is an application. A codec is a coding format stored inside a file wrapper. While for audio the codec is often unique to the wrapper, it doesn't have to be the case. Sometimes files with mp3 codecs will be stored as .mov whichsome audio applications refuse, but if I change the extension to .mp3 this will be enough to trick some applications into accepting it while others insist upon the .mov because they are looking at the wrapper, not the content. Not highly pertinent but it goes to show file isn't always detemining for codec. Certainly for video you can have multiple codecs per wrapper since audio and video will each have their own codecs but all stored inside a single file.

Even though Max is old, if it works then use it. On my G4 computer I am using to type this now I have a Quicktime Pro version (free!) that dates from OS 8.6 days (yes, I mean mid 1990s) which still works.

I believe there is also compressed AIFF (AIFC) thuogh I don't know how seamless that is to use, and probably isn't as efficient as ALE otherwise why develop a new codec?.

iTunes: How to set the play order of songs on an MP3 CD - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2455

Here's my $ .02: Rip the CDs to ALAC. These tracks can then be played on OS X and Windows using iTunes and on Linux using Songbird. Once you've got the CDs ripped to ALAC then you can create MP3s from the ALAC files from right in iTunes. You can then use Smart Playlists to manage the two file formats.

If you do choose to go with FLAC, you can use VLC on all three platfoms, as Limnos suggests. But you'll need additional software to create the MP3 files. I also use Max and XLD, and even though Max is getting a little old it still works just fine.

You can use uncompressed, lossless (AIFF, WAV) if you want. Compressed, lossless (ALAC, FLAC) is more space efficient. Just be sure and use AIFF and not WAV, as has been pointed out in the thread.

For creating the MP3 files in iTunes you might want to check out this AppleScript, calle Quick Convert. It will allow you to create copies from the lossless files of various file formats (MP3, AAC) on the fly without changing any settings in the iTunes Preferences.

Is there such a thing a a session-only temporary playlist in iTunes that will play mp3 files as long as my Mac is on & then will be deleted when I turn it off?

No. That's the problem with playing them in iTunes, they have to be part of the library and will be added to the library once you start playing them if iTunes is set as the default player.

I know that there are a bunch of free Mac-compatible 3rd-party mp3 players. Are there any that you are aware of that will play a sequence of mp3 files without having to create a playlist? I can download Vox from the App Store. Are you familiar with it?

No. My computer can't use the Mac App Store. I sometimes use COG. It creates its own short playlist but it is easy to delete it since it only exists in the player window.

I'm about to hunt for a mp3 ripper & use it as the default mp3 ripper instead of iTunes.

Go ahead. We have no specific loyalty to iTunes. People responding here are just other users like you. Probably Apple wouldn't care either since they make no money off you using iTunes to convert mp3s and yu using something other than iTunes for that won't affect the bottom line. I use XLD or Max.

As for where iTunes stores files, where they go depends upon how they are labeled and that service is provided by Gracenote which in turn gets some of its tags from users like you who, as life has it, are inconsistent. That goes double for classical recordings since the tags aren't really set up for classical music structure (plenty of complaints seen here in the past). So one person labels a CD putting composer in the artist field, and somebody else puts the orchestra there, and somebody else puts in the conductor. Thank your fellow classical music afficianados for things being scattered about.