Digitizing music cd’s

[billybutcher]

I thought iTunes used AAC anyway.

[letsmile]

In fact itunes has quite a few formats, one of which is mo3, but that is indeed considered to be relatively poor quality versus the ‘lossless’ option. The positive for mp3 is the versatility, as I understand it.

I’ve been look at how I could use an external sd card for music with the iphone and itunes but it’s not possible, so what I’ll do is review the playlists and albums I think i’ll listen to versus some which just don’t interest me any longer, and then simply save them on the iphone for playback anywhere. There is an option to use an sd card with the dongle meant for use with camera sd cards but that also involves another app so not at all practical.

So far very much enjoying stumbling across music I haven’t listened to for ages. And the obvious beauty of playlists is you can ditch those album filler songs you skip anyway

[ChrisMann]

@DieselPilot

iTunes stores them in MP3 format the international standard for audio and will allow you to move them on to other apples devices such as your iPod iPad or iPhone.

Using MP3 is an option but is not the default for iTunes - AAC (Apple Audio Codec) is the default.

Music purchased from the iTunes store will also be downloaded in AAC not MP3.

@DieselPilot

it is only when you purchase music downloaded from the iTunes Store that Apple monitors where the files are shared.

For purchased audio, Apple no longer uses DRM to control the copying of audio files. If you are subscribing to Apple Music then yes you will only be able to access the full library while you continue your subscription (the same as Spotify etc.) but albums you buy are not restricted to any specific devices.

The Apple Music library is also encoded in Apple Lossless (ALAC) so if you subscribe to that you will be getting quality superior to MP3 - in some cases up to 24-bit/192 kHz (better than CD).

@DieselPilot

investing in a good quality DAC to connect to your hifi is also worth considering

This is true, but again MP3 is not the best format to use if you are listening via higher-end audio gear. High bit rate MP3 is good, but Apple Lossless codec is the best format to use if you want to preserve the CD audio quality intact. Or use a different program to rip the files to FLAC, which is also lossless.

MP3 is an inherently lossy audio codec. As you rightly mentioned, drive storage space is cheap so using a better audio format makes sense (to me at least!)

[Porridge]

@KarenLot

But for futureability I guess some sort of centralized master store with indexing structure(s) is best to establish. Then make SD’s off that

And, if your phone doesn’t have an SD slot, you can create a playlist in iTunes and copy it across.