[mca]

I just installed a nice Alpine deck in my Jeep. I am now able to connect an iPod to it and plan to purchase a 160GB iPod Classic so I can stop lugging a bunch of CD's around in the Jeep. I have never been an iTunes user and am confused at what import setting I should be using. I should have plenty of space on the iPod (I plan to rip about 500 CD's) and want to get the best sound quality out of it I can. I don't think I need to go overboard and use AIFF or Apple lossless so I am thinking of using 320kbps and VBR. Will that suffice or should I go lossless? Should I use error correction? Thanks for any input for this iTunes newbie.

[geowak]

I would think that 35,000 songs would fit on it. But I don't those songs would fit if they are lossless. Lossless files are bigger, and will take up much more room on the Ipod HD. Maybe someone here has done this and can chime in.

I have about 600 to 750 CDs copied to my two external HDs. One is a 750gb and the other 500gb. They are lossless files and take up much more space than 160gb.

[JohnR]

What's VBR?

[JLM]

Figure about 35 MB per track for uncompressed Apple files (AIFF). 

My Apple Lossless (ALAC) iTune files average just under 20 MB per track (8,000 for your iPod Classic).  ALAC is comparable to FLAC (most audiophiles use one or the other).

Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) is comparable to MP3 and should take about half the space of ALAC.

For a Jeep (vehicle self noise plus wind/tire noise), I'd consider AAC plenty good enough.  Headphone use is another story.

[cody69]

iTunes has a feature that allows you to import and store CDs in lossless format, and convert to a more space efficient format when syncing to you iPod. This way you can maintain a bit perfect copy of your CDs for listening at home and future use, and choose the format (128, 192, 256 kbs) so all your music fits on you device.

Once you've imported a few CDs and sync'd to your iPod, you can do the math to extrapolate the space requirements for the rest of your library.

[ASCTLC]

To give you some reference:  I import all my CDs at ALAC.  I have my iPOD Nano 16Gb topped off with a playlist that has 142 albums, which is 1813 songs, which is also 5.6 days of music.

I could save myself some room converting to a lower resolution like AAC for the Nano and probably will when I get better familiar and use of it in the future.

Andy

[oskar]

What's VBR?

I believe it means Variable Bit Recording.

[hotmailjbc]

i would rip lossless and with error correction on. in the future you may wish you had done it right in the first place and not have to re-rip. you can always compress but there is no way to add info...good luck .