[Topmounter]

I currently use iTunes to manage my music and I'm looking at re-ripping some or all of my CD library to the Apple Lossless codec.

However I'm not sure how best to manage multiple versions of my music files. I definitely have CD's that I have no interest in storing in the higher bit-rate format so I expect that complicates things a bit.

I'll also need to keep / make an AAC or MP3 version for use on my flash-based devices, while using the ALAC file on my 80GB Ipod and on my laptop.

Any tips / suggestions are greatly appreciated.

 

[yeahx]

I added "ALAC" to the album names of the ALAC versions. You could just add a * at the end or anything else you might want. The only thing is iTunes sometimes didnt separate them for me even though they had different tags. This only happened a few times and was kind of weird but I just had to retag and it was fixed. So before encoding the CD to each format you could change the album name in the CD info. Or if you are going to have it as ALAC and encode to other stuff, rip the ALAC first and then just encode to other formats from that and rename the files to have a different album name after encoding. You could also make a playlist for each format and add files to their respective playlist as you go. I just thought of that one. Oh yeah you can also click the "kind" column to list files by format. You might have to go to "View-> View Options" to turn that column on. I came up with more ideas than I thought I knew, hope that helps a little.

 

[krmathis]

'Smart Playlist' is the trick, where you filter by "Kind".

 

[iriverdude]

Two seperate main directories, lossy and lossless. Software music players database is linked to lossless directory. For lossy on DAP just copy and paste directories across and update database on the DAP.

 

[apatN]

Just save them in folders on your local harddisk. Add ALAC to those that are in Apple Lossless.

 

[gordolindsay]

I keep two separate library's on my computer. One Flac and one mp3. I keep flac in foobar 2000 and mp3 in iTunes for my iPod. But I also have my wife and sons mp3's that have their separate library's in iTunes.

I have folder's for each ie: My Flac, My MP3, Wife's Flac, Wife's MP3, etc.

When you go to open itunes, hold down shift (in windows) then click on the itunes icon. Keep holding it down until a screen pops up giving you the option of creating a new library.

You can then create a library for ALAC and one aac/mp3. Listen to ALAC from the computer and aac/mp3 on your DAP.

 

[apatN]

Damn.. All this fooling around with iTunes. What if you decide to be smart and stop using iTunes? You will be left with all your Apple libraries and ALAC files that are useless for other non-Apple gear.
Just use the normal way to store files by either creating different folders for mp3s and lossless or sort them by type.

 

[krmathis]

I do the following, which works perfectly.
* Create a folder system in the iTunes folder. Example ~/iTunes/iTunes Music/Codec (Apple Lossless, AAC, MP3, ...)/Artist/Album/
* Uncheck these two iTunes options.

* Drag and drop the ~/iTunes/iTunes Music/ folder into the iTunes application window to add to library.

Then iTunes wont mess up your music file system, and you can easily locate you albums etc. Paired with the above mentioned Smart Playlist and you should be set.