Multiple libraries with different resolutions

[Boatguy]

I'm sure I'm not the only person trying to do this, but I can't find a thread that covers the subject.

 

About 80% of my collection is stored as red book AIFF, the balance is lower resolution. So what's the problem?

 

I want a second copy of my collection, complete with playlists and metadata, ideally synchronized, with lower resolution for mobile and portable on my laptop and iOS devices. Lower resolution because the other devices don't have 600GB of storage.

 

I can use dbPoweramp to do the initial conversion to a lower resolution, that's easy enough. But how do I keep them in sync?

 

Let's assume I'm not wedded to any particular server / player, it's just a collection of music, though I currently have only Macs and don't particularly like working with Windows. What's the best solution, if there is one?

 

Thanks!

[stefano_mbp]

Hi Boatguy,

 

as your library is compatible whit iTunes (AIFF) you could use iTunes to sync your iOS portable devices (iPhone and/or iPad).

iTunes let you make the choice to reduce the resolution while synching an iOS device as you can see in the picture below

 

To have you music library available on a laptop (MBP ?) you could use an external HD (like WD Passport, they are available in several capacity) and keep the HD synchronized with your "master" library using tools as FreeFileSync, SuperDuper, ecc.

 

Hope this can help

[Richard Dale]

I'm sure I'm not the only person trying to do this, but I can't find a thread that covers the subject.

 

About 80% of my collection is stored as red book AIFF, the balance is lower resolution. So what's the problem?

 

I want a second copy of my collection, complete with playlists and metadata, ideally synchronized, with lower resolution for mobile and portable on my laptop and iOS devices. Lower resolution because the other devices don't have 600GB of storage.

 

I can use dbPoweramp to do the initial conversion to a lower resolution, that's easy enough. But how do I keep them in sync?

 

Let's assume I'm not wedded to any particular server / player, it's just a collection of music, though I currently have only Macs and don't particularly like working with Windows. What's the best solution, if there is one?

 

Thanks!

 

I keep two versions of my music collection - one in AIFF and the other in ALAC. Maybe how I do it is a bit complicated, but I'll explain what I do.

 

I use three logins to my iMac and a 3Tb hard disk called 'Music10' with both AIFF and ALAC collections:

 

1) Normal login with iTunes in /Volumes/Music10/Staging.

 

This used for ripping CDs to AIFF with XLD, and converting purchased FLAC files to AIFF via XLD.

 

2) Login 'itunes_aiff' with iTunes in /Volumes/Music10/AIFF

 

This is my full collection as AIFF. Once I have ripped some new CDs to /Volumes/Music10/Staging I use iTunes to import them into this AIFF collection

 

3) Login 'itunes_alac' with iTunes in /Volumes/Music10/ALAC

 

This is my full collection as ALAC. Once I have ripped some new CDs to /Volumes/Music10/Staging I use XLD to transcode the AIFF tracks to ALAC to import them into this ALAC collection. I use iTunes to sync the ALAC to portable Apple devices, and iSyncr to sync to my Android phone.

 

 

I have written a script that I use to periodically compare the AIFF and ALAC collections and find any differences, which I fix up manually.

[Foggie]

I'm sure I'm not the only person trying to do this, but I can't find a thread that covers the subject.

 

About 80% of my collection is stored as red book AIFF, the balance is lower resolution. So what's the problem?

 

I want a second copy of my collection, complete with playlists and metadata, ideally synchronized, with lower resolution for mobile and portable on my laptop and iOS devices. Lower resolution because the other devices don't have 600GB of storage.

 

I can use dbPoweramp to do the initial conversion to a lower resolution, that's easy enough. But how do I keep them in sync?

 

Let's assume I'm not wedded to any particular server / player, it's just a collection of music, though I currently have only Macs and don't particularly like working with Windows. What's the best solution, if there is one?

 

Thanks!

 

Unless I'm missing something, this seems like a lot of unnecessary work (IMHO). If your mainly using itunes, then I think all you need to do is select the option in itunes to convert to a lower res (on your portable devices)

 

That way you only need to manage one database. That 600GB database will soon be larger and larger and managing one database is challenging enough as it is.

 

There are other options but I think this is the solution that would meet your goal.

[Pepsican]

I can use dbPoweramp to do the initial conversion to a lower resolution, that's easy enough. But how do I keep them in sync?

 

 

You don't. I have the exact same problem. Here is what I do.

 

On my NAS drive, there is a folder that I refer to as the Master. It contains FLAC files of all my music. I run occassional integrity checks on it, make sure the metadata is good, etc, etc. But I also want to play my music in the car or on my phone and so does my wife. Our cars don't play the same fileformats. My wife's care only like MP3, but my car does WMA (losless compressed!). My phone will happily play FLAC but I don't have the storage, so it goes as AAC, while my wife's iPhone needs to be synced from iTunes.

 

To maintain all this in sync and store all this, is undoable. But you can throw raw power at the problem. The DBPowerAmp Batch converter allows you to convert the master files to multiple formats at the same time. With my 10,000 files that takes a few hours and I usually do it overnight. The converted files are then copied to USB sticks, phones and whatever. Once complete, the files are deleted, freeing up the storage space.

 

The major advantage is that I don't have the issue of synchronisation and I also don't have the concern about exponential storage space occupation.

 

In your case, because you use iTunes, you could also have it all within one library and let iTunes manage what gets copied where. But I'm sure the synchronisation headache will drive you around the bend.

[Panelhead]

I'm sure I'm not the only person trying to do this, but I can't find a thread that covers the subject.

 

About 80% of my collection is stored as red book AIFF, the balance is lower resolution. So what's the problem?

 

I want a second copy of my collection, complete with playlists and metadata, ideally synchronized, with lower resolution for mobile and portable on my laptop and iOS devices. Lower resolution because the other devices don't have 600GB of storage.

 

I can use dbPoweramp to do the initial conversion to a lower resolution, that's easy enough. But how do I keep them in sync?

 

Let's assume I'm not wedded to any particular server / player, it's just a collection of music, though I currently have only Macs and don't particularly like working with Windows. What's the best solution, if there is one?

 

Thanks!

 

I have one drive that is 100% 44.1/16 from CD. Another that is all ISO files from SACD. And another that is 96/24 converted from ISO and the few purchases.

Using the Pure Music Less is More the PCM files play from a playlist. A+ can play the ISO files direct.

Going lower res should be easy.

[17629]

Apple products don't come with a lot of storage space to begin with, and as far as I know, you can't expand. If you're looking to convert 600gb to a lossy format the quality is going to have to be pretty low for everything to fit. Probably way less than 320kbps. It may make more sense to get something that can take a lot of internal storage. With an Android product, all you would need is one or two 128 microSD cards for your entire lossy collection. The music player software is also a lot better for Android.

[Boatguy]

Several of the posts do point out that the solution for the iOS devices is easy; just use iTunes to sync to those devices and it will downsample the AIFF files. And as someone else points out, it will probably need to be either less than 320Kb, or less than the entire collection; the latter is definitely possible.

 

I use my laptop when traveling, and it's more problematic. I can use dbPoweramp or Fission or some other products to produce a down sampled copy of the library, but I haven't figured out how to sync the playlists between the two libraries. If I could figure out how to have iTunes Match sync only playlists, it could work as it syncs the playlists nicely. Maybe I need to spend more time with that and let the iOS devices and laptop sync with it (very tedious because everything must come through the net, particularly when getting a new iPhone), and just make sure that my main library never downloads from iTunes Match.

 

Thinking about this further, another solution is to forget the laptop all together and just buy an iPod Touch with 128GB for portable music. It makes more sense than loading up my iPhone with storage since I replace it every year and I could probably use the same iPod Touch for at least 3yrs before an update. Wow, what a concept - a portable music player!

 

Deja vu!

 

Thanks everyone!

[17629]

If you are going to get player just for portable music, I wouldn't go with an Apple product. Its a $200 upgrade to go from a 16gb iPod to a 128gb one. If you buy a 16gb tablet that accepts microSD cards, you can get the same 128gb for about $50. Also, you can remove the SD cards from a tablet/smart phone, and put them in whatever you upgrade to in the future.