Advice on iTunes Settings for the BIG RIP.

I have a Meridian 508.20 CDP for digital playback that gets the job done. However, over the past several months I’ve been following with increasing interest the numerous dialogues pertaining to computer music servers.

I have been using iTunes for a couple years (currently v7.1.10) mostly in mid-fi capacity to stream music direct from my G5 Dual Core & iBook to my amp and also for downloading songs to my iPod.

I only have a small percentage of my CDs digitized. Currently my iTunes is a hodge podge of formats and bit rates, the lion’s share of these are in AAC format for my iPod. The idea of ripping my entire CD collection is daunting and the complexity and technical confusion has kept me from committing to doing it. But I am now ready to undertake it. However, there are still some grey areas for me that I’d like to clear up.

I want to reorganize my iTunes library and begin ripping my CDs in earnest in as high a sonic quality as possible. I want to do this ONCE and not have to revisit this and re-rip them down the road (gah!). Most of my music is rock, but every music genre is represented.

From what I’ve been reading Apple Lossless is the way to go. Can I get some advice regarding how to configure other settings in iTunes? Space between songs? Also, I have some shared music and MP3s… the sound levels are different for some of these songs…I want to avoid that in ripping my CDs so that if I use the shuffle feature all the songs will be in the same ballpark with respect to volume.

I’ve read that Apple Lossless is ‘reversible’ insofar as one can convert the Apple Lossless files to AIFF files (or to other lossless formats). Can I get a conformation on this as there is a nagging doubt in the back of my mind that at some point in time I’ll need to redo EVERYTHING when the technology changes (gah!).

I read somewhere that when ripping to Apple Lossless takes considerably more time than ripping to AIFF, and that when ripping to Apple Lossless iTunes does this in two steps: FIRST rips to AIFF and then converts it to Apple Lossless. I also read that to save time some folks rip to AIFF in iTunes, and then set their library to do a batch conversion to Apple Lossless overnight. Can someone shed some more light onto how this latter is done?

Ultimately, I would like to have a main iTunes music library consisting of Apple Lossless files which will be streamed to my 2 channel audio system (I’ll likely upgrade to some sort of stand alone DAC [+USB?] device in the near future). Complimenting this, I would also like to maintain AAC files for some songs (songs that either I only have in AAC format or songs that are dupes of the Lossless files but converted to AAC for size reasons to play on my iPod). And finally, a library of MP3 files (again, songs that either I only have in MP3 format or songs that are dupes of the Apple Lossless files but converted to MP3 for my iPod). How best to organize these three file formats in iTunes? One music library? 3 separate music libraries? It would be nice to have all the music accessible in one lump so that I could access them all with the shuffle feature for background listening.

Thanks a bunch for any illumination into working out these details.