Media player help

[TheCool]

I have an issue that I'd really appreciate your help solving. I'm using my macbook as my source and I have an iphone as well.

What I'd like to do is have multiple copies of my music (one copy in alac and the other in aac) so that I can put the aac files on my iphone but listen to the alac at home. My problem is that I don't like seeing the clutter of multiple files in the file folder nor do I want to worry that when I hit shuffle, I'm playing aac files when I'd rather play alac.

My question is, is there another media player that works on mac that allows iphone syncing so that I can just have the aac files in that media player and my alac in itunes?

If not, is there a better way to handle this situation to achieve my goal?

Thanks for your help,

-Julian

 

[krmathis]

I see three possible solutions:
1. Use two Libraries (press and hold "Alt" while launching iTunes).
2. Using two smart playlists (filter by "Kind" (aka codec)). One for ALAC and one for AAC.
3. Use the Lossless to AAC Workflow. If it works with the iPhone that is.

 

[fishpatrol]

I've gone the smart playlist route before and been fairly successful. "Fairly" only in the sense that it still requires a lot of maintenance, but that's always going to be the case. Probably depends on the size of your library and how often you change up music on the iPhone. I'd rather use Simplify Media or carry fewer songs with me than maintain two libraries, given the choice, but that's not always an option.

 

[iriverdude]

Perhaps use two media players libs? One with lossy, another lossless? For example (if it was a PC) Winamp for lossless, and Media Monkey for lossy.

 

[TheCool]

Thx for all the help guys. I'm using the smart playlist atm but I'm going to give the workflows thing a shot. That seems to be the most effective way of handling it from my pov.

 

[krmathis]

Dual post... Sorry!

 

[krmathis]

Yeah, you should definitely give the workflow a try.
I have tried all three solutions and landed on the workflow. The transcoding take a bit of time, with the bonus that you save local space and don't need to handle dual set of local files.