iTunes to MP3's on a CD ...

[Re-Joyce]

Hello,

I have all my digital music ripped into iTunes using the Apple lossless codec. I have a car with a CD player that will play MP3's.

What is the easiest way to put a selection of the iTunes library onto a batch of CDRs for the car? What MP3 bit rate would you recommend (the car is pretty quiet)?


Cheers
Jason

[spur07]

use the highest bit rate you can for MP3 (320kb) - you'll still gets loads of stuff on a CDR.

As a Mac person I always use 'Toast' to burn CD's.

[Re-Joyce]

Thanks - what does the lossless to MP3 conversion?
Should have added that I am a PC user.


cheers
Jason

[guey]

You can do the conversion in iTunes. Under the advanced tab, "create mp3 version"

[prowla]

You can copy MP3 files out of the iTunes folders to your favourite disk burning software, as data, not music.

[Re-Joyce]

Thanks guys.
Will give it a go later!


regards
Jason

[Peter Stockwell]

if you do it in iTunes, unless something has changed recently, means that you'll have your MP3 versions mixed with your lossless versions in the same library.

[prowla]

Originally Posted by Peter Stockwell

if you do it in iTunes, unless something has changed recently, means that you'll have your MP3 versions mixed with your lossless versions in the same library.

You can try and do some clever stuff with the sorting tags on the files so that you can group a given album's lossless together and then its MP3, rather than having track1, track1, track2, track2, ...
For instance you could go to sorting and set the sort album as "MP3 - <albumname>".
I do something like that to sort albums of a given group in chronological order, ie. set the sort album field to "<YEAR> - <albumname>"

[deltaunit]

You could create two smart playlists sorted on filetypes, or you could just trash the mp3's once they've been burnt - it only takes a minute to convert them anyway.

[Re-Joyce]

Ok, not quite as simple as I first thought ... can I simply copy them to another directory on the PC then delete them from the iTunes library?

cheers
Jason

[deltaunit]

You should be able to drag and drop from itunes (although that might be mac only?), that would copy the mp3s out to a folder.

If itunes is set to manage you music folder you'll probably want to then delete the mp3's and associated files from itunes. (That would just leave you with your exported ones above).

It's more complicated to explain it than to do it, so don't worry. Just be sure not to delete your ALACs!

[Peter Stockwell]

Originally Posted by prowla

I do something like that to sort albums of a given group in chronological order, ie. set the sort album field to "<YEAR> - <albumname>"

If you click enough times on the column album, it'll give album by artist, and then album by year, no need to mess with tags. The only thing it doesn't get right is two albums the same year, say, Wind and Wuthering and Trick of the Tail, for example.

[RickyC6]

Cassette - so simple.

[prowla]

Originally Posted by Peter Stockwell

If you click enough times on the column album, it'll give album by artist, and then album by year, no need to mess with tags. The only thing it doesn't get right is two albums the same year, say, Wind and Wuthering and Trick of the Tail, for example.

With the sort order hack thing, I add in a letter for two albums in the same year, ie. <year><a-z><album>. If I were really obsessive, I guess I would find the month of release of the album!

[cansav]

If you are using a Mac, I'd recommend XLD. It's a batch converter and you wouldn't have to clean up your library afterwards. Just change the output directory in the preferences, I believe default is the same as your source file.