iTunes - Smarter Than It Looks

[howeird]

So I made a test data DVD from iTunes to see if the AAC audio files also transferred the artist/album/genre info like MP3 tags do. Opening the DVD in Windows didn't show anything except the song name. I took the disc to work and dragged and dropped some of the audio clips into an empty iTunes folder, and yup. all the info is there. Good news, this means nothing gets lost when the DVD contents are slurped up by an iPod.

Been toying with the idea of getting an iPod, but they don't seem to make them in white anymore, so what's the point? :-)

Seriously, though, my Sony network walkman is 1/8 the size of an iPod classic, 1/3 the size of a shuffle, stores plenty of tunes and has a much better sound (Sony's ATRAC is, to my ear, much higher quality than the equivalent bitrate AAC), and since it is silver and metal it is much shinier. And I have no interest in watching video on a 320x240 screen - been there done that a dozen years ago when it was bleeding edge.

One thing about iTunes is it's sloooowwww on a PC. On my screaming fast quad core CPU, 52x CD reader, it takes about 10 minutes to rip a CD to AAC. That's about 7 minutes too long. It took 51 minutes to burn 1.3GB onto a DVD even though I have a 16x writer and 16x blanks. That's about 46 minutes too long, if you count overhead. Anyone on a Mac have comparison numbers? unseelie23?

Other than the speed, iTunes is pretty decent. The colors are boring, but so are the screens for Sony Sonic Stage, which iTunes strongly resembles. Excellent "find" feature which drops non-matching  items from view as you type in each character. Sorting is easy & intuitive. I have yet to discover how to tell it to plop ripped files directly into a folder other than the library, but it's a simple drag and drop once they are ripped.

Comments

[unseelie23.livejournal.com]

There is a setting in the preferences to let itunes organize your music. If you uncheck that, it will just link to the music where ever you've placed it when you drag it into the window.

Also in the preferences is an option to rip music to formats other than AAC. I tend to use MP3, even though AAC is arguably better than AAC, because that makes it easier for me to share my music with friends.

Rip comparisions... hmm, unsure. I'll have to play around some after I finish moving.

If you do decide to get an ipod, let me know. I can meet you at the Apple store and save you 10%.

[bovil.livejournal.com]

Don't rip-and-convert with anything but Exact Audio Copy. They've explored error identification and correction more than any commercial tool on the market, and they hook into a ton of open-source codecs that aren't optimized for speed (at the expense of quality).

Then drag your shiny new MP3 files (or whatever) into iTunes.

[howeird]

Exact Audio Copy was a nice program in its day, considering it was written by some guy in Dortmund as a class project. In modula2. It may or may not be more accurate than iTunes on a high-speed CPU and optical drives with current firmware ripping pristine new discs, which is what I'm doing. High quality doesn't really matter to me, my ear will complain as soon as I compress the file anyway.

[howeird]

AAC - in this case the project is specifically to populate someone's iPod, complete with tag info. Otherwise I'd rip WAV and convert as needed.

Organize - yeah I saw that, but wasn't sure what it meant. Thanks.

Thanks for the offer, but I'm sticking with my Sony. :-)

[unseelie23.livejournal.com]

MP3s will play on the iPod just fine. I know iTunes will play .wav files, not sure about the iPod.

[howeird]

Yup, I know, but I was going with the default setting.