rip in 16/44.1 or 32? internal or external CD Driver? 2 playlists or 2 libraries on iTunes?

[leorose]

Hi everybody,

i'm a french newbie so forgive the silliness and bad syntax of my questions. ;-)

I will rip all my cd's (500). I have 2 iMacs, 1MacBook, 1 iPhone, 4 iPods 1 airport express, 1 PS3 and a yamaha home cinema amplifier with TOS and SPDIF "in" ( I don't want to mention the really poor quality yamaha speakers made for 5.1).

I plan to buy some new speakers and probably a NAS.

I will probably rip w/ iTunes in AIFF and for sure will use iphone's remote

Few questions after a lot of reading:

1) should I rip my cd's in 16 or 32 bits?(it seems useless for me to rip in 32 bits and maybe it's simply impossible with iTunes but I want to be sure...)

2) should I rip with the internal CD/DVD player or should I buy an external one to avoid injury after 500 rips?

3)What's your advice for the best management of different format (mp3/AAC and AIFF) of the same tunes as i still want to fill my iPods with plenty of songs and spare the disk splace on these toys but want to enjoy audiophile standards at home. Should i build 2 different libraries or simply use smartplaylists. i'm affraid of the uneasy use of iPhone's remote thru 1 playlist in the case of smartplaylists.

Thank for your advices!!!

David

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi Leorose -

 

1. I recommend ripping in the exact same bit rate as the source. In this case 16 bit. This is your gold copy that is identical to the disc. If you want to mess around with different bit rates later then I would rip a few tracks at a different bit rate.

 

2. I wouldn't purchase an external drive just to avoid injury. If you do you've alreay spent the money you may never need to spend on fixing the original drive :~) Some people do say a good external drive is a necessity for accurate rips. My experience has been quite different.

 

3. Managing different formats is pretty tough. Separate libraries is my preferred method. Playlists are more annoying than useful for this purpose.

 

[souptin]

Very little to add to the above, except that:

 

I am very happy with manually managing my iPod music, instead of automatic sync. This way, I only have the one (in my case mostly lossless) library on the computer, and I copy the music I'm interested in for that day/week to my iPod.

 

There's no way I could sync all of my music to the iPod in lossless format. Also, since I listen to my iPod on the stock apple earbuds there's no way I can appreciate the full quality of lossless files. I own better earbuds than the apple ones, but for everyday use they hurt my ears. Quite frankly it doesn't bother me at all that I can't access every single music file I have at any given moment.

 

Having said that, the top of my wish list for the next iTunes would be automatic transcoding to a more compact format when copying music to an iPod. Fingers crossed that somebody is listening.

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

"Having said that, the top of my wish list for the next iTunes would be automatic transcoding to a more compact format when copying music to an iPod. Fingers crossed that somebody is listening."

 

If Apple would only carry the feature over from the iPod Shuffle! It works perfectly on my wife's Shuffle!

 

[leorose]

Hi,

thanks for your replies.

As i've begin the ripping , new questions are raising:

one thing i'll regret with the cd's as material objects is the leaflet ant the liner notes.

I've tried to check how these notes are inserted in the albums I bought on iTunes but I can't figure how to manage all these texts files in iTunes. (and w/ iPhone's remote).

Any precious advice?

(ps: do you think i should start a new topic for this problem as it's quite different than the first ones).

Thanks again.

David