[Dragoon47]

I have been conducting some research but will admit that I am confused so therefore requesting some help and advice please on the following:
 
My music collection is within itunes on my macbook which consists of about 1250 albums which includes a mixture of both CD's and music downloaded on line.
 
I am considering building a new PC for a mixture of UNI work and music listening with new kit such as for example Cowan equipment, which from what I have read works better and is easier windows based, plus I need three screens and some windows only based programs, therefore:
 
what is the best way of converting my entire itunes library and should I use Foobar2000 for example, if I copy and move my itunes library to a new PC?
 
Is there an easy way of converting the whole collection to support a new bit of kit?
 
I would also still like to use my ipod as well, so basically I am setting up a new system from scratch?
 
Thank you

 

[Parall3l]

Subscribed, I'll need to transfer my library as well so this would help 

 

[sourced]

iTunes on windows will work just like iTunes on the macbook - no conversions will be necessary, afaik. MP3/AAC/ALAC files can all be read by iTunes on either platform. Once you copy all the music files to the new computer's hard drive, you can just drop them into iTunes. 
 
You could use foobar, but if you're already familiar with iTunes it'd probably be easiest to stay with it at least for a little while. Your iPod will have to be restored/reformatted by iTunes running on Windows, then you'll have to copy music back onto it.
 
The hard part (imo) is getting the files onto the new computer.

 

[Brooko]

If you're going lossless to lossless (ie ALAC to FLAC) or lossless to lossy (ie ALAC to MP3) for your Cowon, I'd recommend dbpoweramp.  You can actually look at the trial version here.
 
It's a PC app - but also works on Linux (via Wine).  Very versatile - will encode using multiple cores.  For my purposes it did everything I needed to do - I bought the paid version.

 

[bluzeboy]

you will  need this in your componants folder if you use apple lossless.
 
http://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_input_alac

 

[vrillusions]

I use itunes on both my home computer (windows) and work laptop (mac).  itunes has a feature called "home sharing" that was added recently that makes transfering music between itunes really simple.  The catch is both itunes need to have your apple id authorized (can have a max of 5 at any time).  You may have to go into preference and turn it on, don't remember if it was on by default.  But you can then see the other computer's itunes library from each computer (make sure itunes is open on both of them).  You can then transfer music over from within itunes.  Needless to say you should have a good network connection between the two computers to speed things up.  Just make sure both are wired and it should be fine.

 

[Music Alchemist]

You've probably worked everything out long ago, but I thought it worth mentioning that dBpoweramp's Batch Converter is extremely useful.