reformatting music collection

[ratso]

i have decided to re-format my music files for my new touch. i have my files currently in apple lossless and have decided to re-format them to flac. i will do this on my mac using NCH's 'switch' audio converter. my files will be stored on my new vortexbox appliance NAS/ripper. before i get too far i would like some input on the best settings to use.

#1. what compression setting? i read the thread that recommended using compression setting 0 for 24/96 to avoid stuttering. should i use 0 for ALL my flac's or just the 24/96? the default setting i believe is 3, should i use this for the rest? does it make a difference except for file size (i have plenty of storage so that is not an issue).

#2. what sample rate should i use? default is 44.1. this is "cd quality" correct? so when reformatting lossless files burned from a cd, would there be any benefit from changing this/raising this up? i take it i should raise it to 96K if i need to reformat 24/96 files.

#3. i am doing this mostly because i don't want to use iTunes anymore for my squeezebox - i would like to just take it out of the chain to simplify things. also my vortexbox rips in flac. am i thinking about this all wrong? would it be simpler just to drag and drop my music files in apple lossless to my vortexbox and just have a big jumble of apple lossless files and flac files and just not point iTunes to my vortexbox so it doesn't use these files?

thanx in advance for any help/suggestions.

[JJZolx]

i have decided to re-format my music files for my new touch. i have my files currently in apple lossless and have decided to re-format them to flac. i will do this on my mac using NCH's 'switch' audio converter. my files will be stored on my new vortexbox appliance NAS/ripper. before i get too far i would like some input on the best settings to use.

#1. what compression setting? i read the thread that recommended using compression setting 0 for 24/96 to avoid stuttering. should i use 0 for ALL my flac's or just the 24/96? the default setting i believe is 3, should i use this for the rest? does it make a difference except for file size (i have plenty of storage so that is not an issue).

I've always used the default setting (5, actually) for 16/44.1. I don't think I've seen any reports that it's been any kind of problem for the Touch. It's only the higher bitrates that are sometimes an issue.

#2. what sample rate should i use? default is 44.1. this is "cd quality" correct? so when reformatting lossless files burned from a cd, would there be any benefit from changing this/raising this up? i take it i should raise it to 96K if i need to reformat 24/96 files.

If you're transcoding to move your library into a new lossless audio format, I think it would be wise to not change either the sample size or bitrate. Hopefully your software is smart enough to figure out what the original format was and simply keep it unchanged, without you having to tell it.

#3. i am doing this mostly because i don't want to use iTunes anymore for my squeezebox - i would like to just take it out of the chain to simplify things. also my vortexbox rips in flac. am i thinking about this all wrong?

FLAC certainly seems much less problematic for Squeezebox than ALAC. If you can transcode your files to FLAC without losing the metadata tagging then I'd certainly recommend it.

[ratso]

very useful info jim, thanx. i'm not sure if switch automatically keeps the original format or not, can't locate much documentation on the software. it asks you to select your preferences or use the default settings for compression/sampling which assumes that it changes your files into whatever you have it set for.

[lrossouw]

very useful info jim, thanx. i'm not sure if switch automatically keeps the original format or not, can't locate much documentation on the software. it asks you to select your preferences or use the default settings for compression/sampling which assumes that it changes your files into whatever you have it set for.

Always worth testing something like this on a subset of files with various characteristics to see if it mangles anything. I haven't done ALAC but have tried other conversion/retagging software. Worth getting it right before you spend time converting a large collection.

Find some special case files in your collection for testing.

Things to look out for after running test:
- Is the audio fine? Does it play
- Does 16/44 stay 16/44 and so on?
- Converting it back do you end up with the same thing?

Then the tags:
- Are the format of the new tags correct. Some software tries to put the wrong type tags or the wrong version of the tags on music. More a problem on mp3s which end up with a bunch of weird version tags.
- Look at all the tags on the existing file, and check if they are there on the new file. Artists, composers whatever is important to you.
- Check special characters and see what happens to them. ë ê å those kind of things. Also test the software on a folder with special characters in the folder name. (if you have these)
- Genres?
Don't know the mac software for all this but in this process I find mp3tag on Windows very useful.