[OSX-Users] Re: downgrading sound quality?

[Terry Payne]

If people want a good article for understanding the way iTunes stores
tracks, then look at

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/moving-your-itunes-library-to-a-new-hard-drive/

I found it invaluable when moving my AV sources to a Drobo.

Also, take a look at http://dougscripts.com/itunes/ (as Daniel pointed  
out)
for various AppleScripts that do various tasks.

As for Neil's original question - dunno, but what I did in the past
was to just create new versions of the archive with iTunes "Convert  
to" in
the Advanced menu section.  Managing tracks is a headache, however.

One thought could be to back up the index, re-locate your library with  
the Advanced
tab in the iTunes Preferences, create the tracks using "Convert to" in  
the new archive
(you probably want the "Keep iTunes folders organised" deselected for  
this), and
then restore the index (to remove the references to the new tracks).   
Finally, rebuild
a new index for the new archive.

Use the ALT key to switch between archives when you sync and when you  
play music.

But read the ilounge article first before attempting this.

Would I do this?  Am tempted now I think about it, but if you  
regularly get new tracks
then keeping the two archives in sync is just a hassle, so probably  
not.  But it would
be a great way of producing an initial archive for the car, etc,  
without having to worry
about restoring your initial collection.

Golden rule... if you can, back up before this stuff... but you guys  
know this :)

	Terry


_______________________________________________________________________
Terry R. Payne, PhD.              | http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/people/trp
Dept. of Computer Science     | Skype: cappuccinofreak       [AIM:  
drcaphreak]
University of Liverpool             | Voice: +44(0)7747 110780   [Fax:  
+44(0) 151 795 4235]
Liverpool, L69 3BX, UK            | Email: T.R.Payne at liverpool.ac.uk



On 18 Sep 2009, at 18:08, Philip Boulain wrote:

> Chris Andrews wrote:
>> A useful thing to note is that if you hold "Alt" whilst starting  
>> iTunes on OS X, it allows you to choose which iTunes library you  
>> want to start it up using. You could always make a second library  
>> called "Lossy" or something like that.
>
> ...hunh. Why isn't this stuff better documented/more discoverable?
>
>> The application I used for converting a huge amount of files at  
>> once was Max, which gives very good quality MP3s when paired with  
>> the latest LAME encoder (as in, I converted a 160kbps AAC to  
>> ~190kbps MP3 and couldn't tell the difference on reasonable  
>> equipment).
>
> Yeah, Max also lets you rip a CD to multiple formats at once, and  
> will make sensible use of your multiple cores to do this. Supports  
> batch conversion of existing audio too, although Hugh's iTunes  
> suggestion is probably easier if that's what you're doing. Can also  
> automatically add ripped audio to a specified iTunes playlist. It  
> uses LAME et. al., so you get excellent VBR MP3 and other format  
> support.
>
> http://sbooth.org/Max/
>
> Unfortunately its metadata is Musicbrainz only, no FreeDB/Gracenote,  
> so YMMV with how much you have to correct/fill in track names etc.  
> Personally I've found both it and iTunes' (Gracenote?) DB to fail to  
> have useful metadata to about equal proportions.
>
> Steve Harris wrote:
>> I wish the UI would do something useful with the near duplicates  
>> though, you get two entries, one for each format.
>
> Yeah, I often want a breakdown more like [song, i.e. composition] ->  
> [version/arrangement] -> [recording], because I've got different  
> songs with title collisions, rearrangements of songs (the popular  
> approach of mangling " [radio version]" etc. onto the end of the  
> title field offends my inner semantics junkie), and multiple  
> recordings of the same song (e.g. CD vs LP, where neither is  
> outright superior---in extreme cases, MIDI vs digital audio).
>
> -- 
> | Philip Boulain   PhD student |  _`._  |   "Study the past if  
> you     |
> | IAM, ECS, Uni of Southampton | /  K \ |   would divine the  
> future."  |
> | http://zepler.net/~lionsphil | \__-_/ |                 --  
> Confucius |


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