Basic Usage

[JeffY]

Hello fellow users. I must admit, I feel out of my league as I just signed up for this software. I downloaded the software, and starting ripping. Program worked great.....then, what?

I'm a long time iTunes user, and after reading a number of posts, it appears there are "issues" with iTunes. I'm not married to their system; however, I feel the library and Apple products are awesome. I play my Library from laptop, iPhone, iPad, and iPods over my system.

I'm a true audiophile by definition....a person who is enthusiastic about high-fidelity sound reproduction. I truly love great sound! I have a long history of music, and now just want to enjoy quality sound. Hence, the latest move to ripping CDs to gain Lossless quality. As I listen to other "good" systems, I've learned they are playing Flac files or other Lossless files.

How do I get this sound?? I was referred to this site, and use this program. I ripped several CDs and see them on my C:, and don't know what to do next. I know this sounds stupid, however, can someone help this stupid person??

Can I move my ripped CD's to iTunes library, and still benefit with Lossless files?? This is ideal as I hope to continue using Apple products to access my music, etc.

Much indebted to your input!

Jeff

[Spoon]

Yes, iTunes has a folder 'Automatically Add to iTunes' within Music >> iTunes

Move the files into that folder. However iTunes will not play flac, or even recognize it, only Apple Lossless

[garym]

given that you're happy with your apple ecosystem, you should use dbpa to rip your CDs to Apple Lossless. Then as spoon says, move those into your itunes library. Everything else will work as you are used to. Not sure, but I think there is a way in itunes to tell it to convert your apple lossless files automatically (on the fly) to lossy (m4a) files for use on your portable devices.

p.s. There are many good reasons to rip CDs to lossless format (flac, applelossless, etc.). One can use these in home system where storage is no issue, one can always convert from lossless to any sort of lossy file one wants for other (portable) uses. (that is, once something is lossy, converting to something else is another lossy process....but one can convert from lossless to another format as many times as one wants as one is starting from the lossless version). HOWEVER, don't be disappointed if you listen to your new lossless files and decide that they sound exactly the same as your old lossy files (mp3 or m4a/aac). In lots of double blind (ABX), rigorous listening tests, it is rare for a listener to detect whether they are listening to a high quality lossy file or a lossless version. By high quality lossy file, this typically means an mp3 or aac file of sufficient bitrate (depends on the person and music, but many would agree that it becomes very difficult to ABX a 192kbs mp3 file from its lossless counterpart. Of course there are problem music samples that are easier to ABX (and these are often used in testing lossy codecs for improvements) and there are folks that have trained themselves to hear certain cues from lossy files that help them ABX.

For me, I rip to lossless (rip once, rip right, have good metadata (tags) and artwork), and then I'm done. I use all these files in my home system, back them up well, and create a lossy (mp3) mirror of my library for use in my iphones/ipods/ipads.

[JeffY]

"....deep breath". Yes, I exhausted a few more hours last night experimenting, and learned AIFF extensions are a good option for iTunes library. My PC can play the music as well as ability to transfer data to moble applications. You make a good point....rip once / rip right. Then use the master file to change upon your needs. It's a little overwhelming at first; howver, once the process is learned, the program works well. I still have much more to learn...setting up separate library for MP3 usage is a good idea.

Is there a better library to use than iTunes??

Thank you for replying and sharing your knowledge....very helpful!!!

[garym]

itunes is fine. it is a database managment tool as well as player. There are lots of others too (foobar2000 is what I use on my PC). But I'd get my hands around ripping, tagging, etc. before I worried about changing from itunes. Once the tracks are there, well tagged, and organized, you can move or not to any number of music management programs. But you'll still need itunes (mostly) for the iThings. I use itunes for loading up my iThings, but not much else.

p.s. do a bit more research re AIFF, APPLE LOSSLESS, etc. I don't know, but not sure that AIFF has good, standardized tagging method. That's the problem with WAV files too. They work, but tagging is not standard and sort of a mess. Plus they take twice as much space for no reason. I'm afraid AIFF may be the same problem. Why not use Apple Lossless filetype??

[BrodyBoy]

garym is correct....AIFF is not the best choice here. Because you want to stay with the Apple ecosystem, and want losselss, you should rip all your music to Apple lossless.

Beyond that, there are a couple other considerations when adding the music to your iTunes library. If you are particular about how your music is tagged (and you should be, if you want your library to be well-organized and easy to navigate), you don't necessarily want to to simply dump your rips into the "Automatically Add to iTunes" folder. When you put it in there, iTunes overrides the folder or filename conventions you used while ripping and applies its own. If you don't care, and just want this operation to be opaque to you, that's certainly one way to do it. For about 80-90% of your music, that'll work fine....but know that there will be some snafus, like when iTunes creates an album for each title in a compilation, for example.

The other option is that you name & organize your music yourself, and then manually add your new rips to the iTunes library. If you choose to go this route, you need to uncheck the "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" and "Copy files to iTunes media folder when adding to library" options in iTunes Edit>Preferences>Advanced. This keeps iTunes from moving and manipulating your files. Then whenever you rip new music and want to add it to your iTunes library, you'd go to iTunes File>Add folder to library... and select the new folder(s) you wish to add.

Why would you want to go to this extra trouble? Two reasons, to my mind:

(1) You want your digital music library organized specifically the way YOU want it organized, not the inherently sloppy way that iTunes does it. This makes it much easier to do things like find, move, archive, etc your music library in the future. Trust me...you will end up doing this at some point.

(2) You want to avoid having those occasional messes that iTunes like to create. If you used to rip your music with iTunes, I expect you already know what I'm referring to (like how the soundtrack to Lord of the Rings becomes about 25 different "albums" scattered all over the place!) iTunes is particularly poor at organizing things like compilations and multi-CD sets. (To be fair, most rippers, including dBp, aren't very good at this. But at least dBp lets you step in and control/correct the metadata pre-rip. iTunes doesn't.) If you take the time to ensure proper tagging yourself, and then don't let iTunes mess with it, you avoid the mess, have a nice, easily-navigable library, and importantly, know how to fix these kinds of issues whenever they do arise.

[bud261]

Thanks garym for the information. My question (being new to this technology) is how to create lossy files from flac files? Is there software for that?

Bob

[BrodyBoy]

Thanks garym for the information. My question (being new to this technology) is how to create lossy files from flac files? Is there software for that?

Bob

This is what dBpoweramp is for....it allows you to convert between various audio codecs.

[garym]

This is what dBpoweramp is for....it allows you to convert between various audio codecs.

Yes, use dbpa for ripping *and* converting from ,say, ALAC to m4a (AAC). This preserves your metadata and organization. I rip to flac then convert to mp3 for portable devices.