iTunes & Squeezeox - convert higher bit rate songs to 128 kbps aac option in iTunes

[gordonmenninger]

iTunes & Squeezeox - convert higher bit rate songs to 128 kbps aac option in iTunes

My 16 gb iphone 4 is pretty much filled to capacity. I rip all my cd's in lossless format at the highest bitrate. I came across the option to have iTunes convert all my music to 128 kbps. My quesition is: has anyone done this and how was the quality on your iphone / ipod? Also, does it affect the original file that I have linked with the Squeezebox? I would hate to find out that I would now be listening to all my music in 128kbps that I have originally encoded in lossless!

thanks

 

[amey01]

Thanks to Apple and the miserable amount of storage they provide, most people with Squeezeboxes (or other streaming systems for that matter) do exactly as you say - keep two libraries.

I'm not familiar with iTunes' implementation (I rip to FLAC and transcode to MP3 for iPod, using EAC or Foobar), but as long as you have a good backup of those original ALAC files (which you should have anyway - please don't tell me otherwise!) then there should be no problems.

The only issue I can foresee is that if iTUnes places the resulting 128k files in the same folder structure as the original. Make sure you configure it to store them somewhere else so you can easily select which library you want!

 

[MickeyVee]

I'm in the same boat.. All my stuff is Apple lossless and as you, I have a 16GB iPhone4. I did check the box for 128 AAC conversion when syncing music to the iPhone4 and..
- iPhone into Etymotic HF2's or Sennheiser HD 25-1's sound great for on the road music
- original files are intact with no trace of the 128 kbps files - it must do the conversion on the fly

 

[gordonmenninger]

I'm in the same boat.. All my stuff is Apple lossless and as you, I have a 16GB iPhone4. I did check the box for 128 AAC conversion when syncing music to the iPhone4 and..
- iPhone into Etymotic HF2's or Sennheiser HD 25-1's sound great for on the road music
- original files are intact with no trace of the 128 kbps files - it must do the conversion on the fly

Mickey, ok that is what I wanted to hear... I did not want to mess with keeping 2 seperate libraries, etc... If it does it on the fly and does not replace my lossless files with the low res files when I listen to my system on my SB then I am good to go!

 

[amey01]

I did not want to mess with keeping 2 seperate libraries, etc...

This may work for you. Problem with this is - what happens when you need/use more than the miserly 16GB with 128k files, and you want to be free to add and remove files from the iDevice? You don't really want to be re-transcoding everything. But up to you.