iTunes for Dummies

[Bloozguy]

For someone who owned a small but well-equipped 24-track studio years ago I feel like a complete idiot (or just a dinosaur ) asking questions like this.

I own nearly 2,000 CDs and I would love the convenience of listening to anything I want anytime I want.

My kids have had iPods and iPhones for years and I’ve had an iPhone 3GS for a couple of years myself but I have never loaded even one second of music on my iPhone.

Why?

Well, I will likely never use ear buds or headphones of any sort to listen to the music on my iPhone. I will listen through the stereo in my car, my home stereo, or the PA in the space where we practice. Music from my daughter’s iPod sounds terrible through the JBL studio monitors on my home stereo and equally bad through the stereo in my car. No, it’s not just the music she listens to. If I have to put up with sound quality that low I will stick to CDs.

I understand that there are multiple formats in which to store music in iTunes, some of which are touted as “lossless.”

Is that true? What format should I use? How small are the files compared to WAV files?

Can anyone give me some advice to help me make that giant leap into the 21st century?

[mathman]

Apple Lossless is probably the best choice. You could use aiff if you have lots and lots and lots of harddrive space.

[geoff_hartwell]

No matter what you do - DON'T throw out your CDs.

A friend just recently lost all his music in a crash - I'm too OCD to let that happen, even with backup, but whatever you decide to do digitally, keep the physical CDs and booklets/inserts/traycards.

Geoff

[JohnnyB]

On average, digital audio files can be losslessly compressed to 2:1. All the data is still there and can be extracted as full size and used to rip CDS in their full red book format.

I have been ripping my CD collection to iTunes on my MacBook using ALC (Apple Lossless Compression). That means I can fit a 760MB fully loaded CD into about 380MB of space. I have a 500 GB external drive to hold my music files. With ALC that means it can hold the equivalent of over 1300 fully loaded (77 minute) CDs, or more like 1800 average length CDs.

From there, if you have Wi-Fi, by far the easiest way to get the highest quality musical rendition to your home stereo is the Logitech Squeezebox Touch.

This tiny (3x5x3) unit has built-in wi-fi and can find all the music files in all digital formats on all the computers on your home network. It also has a built-in DAC to decode the digital files to send on to headphones or to your home stereo. But wait! There's more! Check out the back panel: It can accept input from Wi-Fi, Ethernet direct connection, or USB, and output to headphones, analog stereo RCA, or digital in optical or coaxial formats to send to an external DAC such as would be in a home theater receiver. The USB input means you can rip music to a thumb drive (such as a selection for a party) and plug it directly into the Touch for playback. It'll find the files and play them.

If you want to have high-quality server-based music to play on your home audio system on a shoestring, this is it.

[mathman]

BTW, I forgot to mention there are pretty large differences in the sound quality coming out of the different models of ipods. The newer ones overall sound better. When I got my 160 gb classic after having an early 40 gb ipod I was amazed at the improvement in sound.

[JohnnyB]

BTW, I forgot to mention there are pretty large differences in the sound quality coming out of the different models of ipods. The newer ones overall sound better. When I got my 160 gb classic after having an early 40 gb ipod I was amazed at the improvement in sound.

Same here. I had been listening through a 1st gen. iPod Touch from 2008. Figured the ones with static memory (as opposed to disk drive) would have an advantage with no moving parts, but my wife gave me a 160 GB iPod Classic for Christmas and the sound improvement was not subtle. I'm wondering if the disk-based iPods require a bigger power supply that also translates into better sound quality. Anyway, the iPod Classic sounds pretty good.

[mathman]

BTW, I forgot to mention there are pretty large differences in the sound quality coming out of the different models of ipods. The newer ones overall sound better. When I got my 160 gb classic after having an early 40 gb ipod I was amazed at the improvement in sound.

Same here. I had been listening through a 1st gen. iPod Touch from 2008. Figured the ones with static memory (as opposed to disk drive) would have an advantage with no moving parts, but my wife gave me a 160 GB iPod Classic for Christmas and the sound improvement was not subtle. I'm wondering if the disk-based iPods require a bigger power supply that also translates into better sound quality. Anyway, the iPod Classic sounds pretty good.

In my work and personally I've owned or used the first gen ipod20 gb, 2nd gen ipod 40gb, first, second, and third ipod nano and ipod touches, and the 160 gb classic. The classic sounds best to me. The 2nd and third generation ipod touches sound good but they seem to color the sound more than the classic if that makes sense.

The newer nano sounds better but not as good as the touch or classic.

[specialk]

In my work and personally I've owned or used the first gen ipod20 gb, 2nd gen ipod 40gb, first, second, and third ipod nano and ipod touches, and the 160 gb classic. The classic sounds best to me.

Thanks for this info, mathman! I am soon going to break down and buy my first iPod.

[jwhitcomb3]

I second the apple lossless format. The sound quality will be as good as your playback device's converters. As for wireless in-home distribution, it is hard to beat the AppleTV if you have an HDMI input port on your stereo or TV.

I buy portable hard drives for my music backup and rotate them through my safe deposit box every six months or so. Pretty cheap insurance.

Jonathan

In my work and personally I've owned or used the first gen ipod20 gb, 2nd gen ipod 40gb, first, second, and third ipod nano and ipod touches, and the 160 gb classic. The classic sounds best to me.

Thanks for this info, mathman! I am soon going to break down and buy my first iPod.

I've found this site useful for deciding when to buy or when to hold off for the next generation.

Jonathan

[Bloozguy]

Wow! Thanks to everyone for the great information.

No matter what you do - DON'T throw out your CDs.

I will never dispose of my CDs...besides, what would I do with my 3 864-CD racks?

From there, if you have Wi-Fi, by far the easiest way to get the highest quality musical rendition to your home stereo is the Logitech Squeezebox Touch.

That looks like the perfect solution for my home stereo...except that based on the reviews its biggest weakness is exactly what I want it to do: play stand-alone from my 1TB USB hard drive.

Quite a few of the reviewers also recommend using FLAC files which Apple doesn't particularly like.

I've found this site useful for deciding when to buy or when to hold off for the next generation.

Thanks Jonathan. That site is great. Helps sift through the "oh, don't buy that now because they're coming out with a new version" BS.

For now I am dumping my CDs onto the drive in full WAV format. By the time I get anywhere near filling it up I will likely have made up my mind on file format, hardware, etc.

Thanks again folks. Once again, the HFC experts come through

[tommy p]

Talk about behind the times, I've still never owned my first iPod.

[JohnnyB]

From there, if you have Wi-Fi, by far the easiest way to get the highest quality musical rendition to your home stereo is the Logitech Squeezebox Touch.

That looks like the perfect solution for my home stereo...except that based on the reviews its biggest weakness is exactly what I want it to do: play stand-alone from my 1TB USB hard drive.

The Logitech has a USB input for reading music files directly from a USB device. For sure it will work with thumb drives. I recommend you write Logitech and ask if it can also directly access music files on a portable USB hard drive. I suspect it can.

[Bloozguy]

The Logitech has a USB input for reading music files directly from a USB device. For sure it will work with thumb drives. I recommend you write Logitech and ask if it can also directly access music files on a portable USB hard drive. I suspect it can.

According to the reviews I have read, it works flawlessly when using a computer as the music server and works very well when using a USB flash drive, but its performance sounds less than stellar when it has to function as the server and access large capacity USB hard drives...even though it is supposed to have that capability. People are complaining about skipped/missed tracks, lost directories, etc.

Based upon my experience with other Logitech products, they won't let this condition persist for very long. They will likely release a hardware/firmware/software fix fairly soon.

That will give me time to copy those CDs to the big drive...

[Uncle Thor's Hamer]

I know my ears are hammered, but generally I cannot hear the difference between wav and mp3 on cheap systems such as a computer or through earbuds plugged into the iPod. Some types of music seems to be much more degraded in the conversion to mp3. Investing in a good set of earbuds will improve the iPod experience immensely. Also, the iPod touch has an eq function accessed via the system settings app.

[Bloozguy]

I know my ears are hammered, but generally I cannot hear the difference between wav and mp3 on cheap systems such as a computer or through earbuds plugged into the iPod. Some types of music seems to be much more degraded in the conversion to mp3. Investing in a good set of earbuds will improve the iPod experience immensely. Also, the iPod touch has an eq function accessed via the system settings app.

For as much as I have abused my ears over the years, my hearing is still in pretty good shape. I can't hear much of a difference between compressed and uncompressed music when I'm listening on ear buds or my cheap computer speakers either. The reason I want better sound is because I don't use ear buds or do much listening on my computer. I have studio grade headphones and JBL studio monitors for home stereo speakers and they are very unforgiving when they are fed a crappy signal source.

[zenmindbeginner]

320 kbps mp3 is indistinguishable from WAV files.

Audio is pretty easy to compress. Lossless compression is fine, but pretty much overkill.

Now, there are "super hearers", those with normal hearing and those with damaged hearing.

Only "super hearers" can even begin to tell the difference between a 320kbps mp3 and a WAV file.

"Super hearers" are an extreme minority in the human race. Probably less than .10% of people are "super hearers".

Normal people would actually have to lose their sight in order to improve their hearing.

A lot of it is vanity. Many musicians and music lovers like to think that they are special (like most people do) and naturally assume that they have exceptional hearing. Most do not.

AAC encoding is a joke. Mp3 delivers smaller file sizes for the same sound quality. Apple likes AAC because it's a compression scheme that contains copy protection technology that they can use to their advantage.

FWIW, FFT and TFFT analysis repeatedly shows that 320kbps mp3 and WAV files are identical.

320kbps mp3 files are roughly around 10 times smaller than the same WAV file.

Plus... WAV files hold absolutely NO metadata, and for that simple fact are nearly worthless for archiving.

I fart in AAC's general direction.

[geoff_hartwell]

I heard somebody fart. Was it you?

(couldn't resist...sorry)

How do you get iTunes to read a ton of material (series of shows, movies, music) from an external hard drive without taking up space on your internal hard drive?

GH

[mathman]

Copy your itunes library to the external drive. The go to itunes prefs and choose the library location. Then keep the drive connected at all times. If you want multiple itunes libraries, then have them stored on different drives and hold down option key on the mac to choose a different library. PC key is the same I think. Don't really know for sure. If you use multiple libraries on a mac only the last chosen library is used for all other ilife apps.