I am very confused about the various audio formats that you can set iTunes
to import songs from CDs. I have OS 10.4.5 and iTunes 6.0.4, and I want to
import songs from CDs like the first Weezer CD so that I can create a mix CD
of various songs from various artists to play on my Toyota Camry CD player
and my home stereo CD player. I read the iTunes Help files to figure out
which format to use to import songs, and I decided to use Apple Lossless.
Is that the right one to burn CDs for use in regular CD players (not
computer CD players)?

However, even after setting it to import songs as Apple Lossless, it still
seems to import them as MPEG-4 AAC because the imported songs' file suffix
in my iTunes folder is .m4a and the Kind column says they are MPEG-4 Audio
Files. In addition, the Help file says that "The High Quality AAC setting
creates files that are usually less than 1 MB for each minute of music," but
the songs imported are between 20 and 35 MB each (the original AIFF files on
the CD are between 27 and 80 MB). What am I doing wrong?

spat <spat@mchsi.com> wrote:

> I am very confused about the various audio formats that you can set iTunes
> to import songs from CDs. I have OS 10.4.5 and iTunes 6.0.4, and I want to
> import songs from CDs like the first Weezer CD so that I can create a mix CD
> of various songs from various artists to play on my Toyota Camry CD player
> and my home stereo CD player. I read the iTunes Help files to figure out
> which format to use to import songs, and I decided to use Apple Lossless.
> Is that the right one to burn CDs for use in regular CD players (not
> computer CD players)?

Yes. You can use the compressed formats (AAC or MP3), but Lossless will
give you as close to "bit perfect" CD copies as you can get with the
uncompressed (AIFF and WAV) formats.


> However, even after setting it to import songs as Apple Lossless, it still
> seems to import them as MPEG-4 AAC because the imported songs' file suffix
> in my iTunes folder is .m4a and the Kind column says they are MPEG-4 Audio
> Files. In addition, the Help file says that "The High Quality AAC setting
> creates files that are usually less than 1 MB for each minute of music," but
> the songs imported are between 20 and 35 MB each (the original AIFF files on
> the CD are between 27 and 80 MB). What am I doing wrong?

The file suffix and type you're seeing are normal. Lossless files are
typically about half the size of the uncompressed audio formats. AAC is
a "lossy" audio reduction format that produces files about one-tenth the
size of AIFF files. If you want to save disk space and aren't fussy
about sound quality, you can import in AAC format and iTunes will
automatically expand the files into standard, uncompressed audio CD
format when you burn a CD from them.

spat <spat@mchsi.com> wrote:

> I am very confused about the various audio formats that you can set iTunes
> to import songs from CDs. I have OS 10.4.5 and iTunes 6.0.4, and I want to
> import songs from CDs like the first Weezer CD so that I can create a mix CD
> of various songs from various artists to play on my Toyota Camry CD player
> and my home stereo CD player. I read the iTunes Help files to figure out
> which format to use to import songs, and I decided to use Apple Lossless.
> Is that the right one to burn CDs for use in regular CD players (not
> computer CD players)?

Yes. You can use the compressed formats (AAC or MP3), but Lossless will
give you as close to "bit perfect" CD copies as you can get with the
uncompressed (AIFF and WAV) formats.


> However, even after setting it to import songs as Apple Lossless, it still
> seems to import them as MPEG-4 AAC because the imported songs' file suffix
> in my iTunes folder is .m4a and the Kind column says they are MPEG-4 Audio
> Files. In addition, the Help file says that "The High Quality AAC setting
> creates files that are usually less than 1 MB for each minute of music," but
> the songs imported are between 20 and 35 MB each (the original AIFF files on
> the CD are between 27 and 80 MB). What am I doing wrong?

The file suffix and type you're seeing are normal. Lossless files are
typically about half the size of the uncompressed audio formats. AAC is
a "lossy" audio reduction format that produces files about one-tenth the
size of AIFF files. If you want to save disk space and aren't fussy
about sound quality, you can import in AAC format and iTunes will
automatically expand the files into standard, uncompressed audio CD
format when you burn a CD from them.

In article <C045FEC1.1A87%spat@mchsi.com>, spat <spat@mchsi.com> wrote:

> I am very confused about the various audio formats that you can set iTunes
> to import songs from CDs. I have OS 10.4.5 and iTunes 6.0.4, and I want to
> import songs from CDs like the first Weezer CD so that I can create a mix CD
> of various songs from various artists to play on my Toyota Camry CD player
> and my home stereo CD player. I read the iTunes Help files to figure out
> which format to use to import songs, and I decided to use Apple Lossless.
> Is that the right one to burn CDs for use in regular CD players (not
> computer CD players)?
>
> However, even after setting it to import songs as Apple Lossless, it still
> seems to import them as MPEG-4 AAC because the imported songs' file suffix
> in my iTunes folder is .m4a and the Kind column says they are MPEG-4 Audio
> Files. In addition, the Help file says that "The High Quality AAC setting
> creates files that are usually less than 1 MB for each minute of music," but
> the songs imported are between 20 and 35 MB each (the original AIFF files on
> the CD are between 27 and 80 MB). What am I doing wrong?

you can make cds from just about any audio format. AIFF is the format on
the actual CD. if you want your copy to sound EXACTLY like the original,
go with that. the other formats, AAC, MP3, Lossless, etc., can be used,
but expect some audio differences. the advantage to the compressed
formats is, obviously, the size they take up. also, if you intend to
store the files on your ipod, you'll want to use something like AAC.

In article <C045FEC1.1A87%spat@mchsi.com>, spat <spat@mchsi.com> wrote:

> I am very confused about the various audio formats that you can set iTunes
> to import songs from CDs. I have OS 10.4.5 and iTunes 6.0.4, and I want to
> import songs from CDs like the first Weezer CD so that I can create a mix CD
> of various songs from various artists to play on my Toyota Camry CD player
> and my home stereo CD player. I read the iTunes Help files to figure out
> which format to use to import songs, and I decided to use Apple Lossless.
> Is that the right one to burn CDs for use in regular CD players (not
> computer CD players)?
>
> However, even after setting it to import songs as Apple Lossless, it still
> seems to import them as MPEG-4 AAC because the imported songs' file suffix
> in my iTunes folder is .m4a and the Kind column says they are MPEG-4 Audio
> Files. In addition, the Help file says that "The High Quality AAC setting
> creates files that are usually less than 1 MB for each minute of music," but
> the songs imported are between 20 and 35 MB each (the original AIFF files on
> the CD are between 27 and 80 MB). What am I doing wrong?

you can make cds from just about any audio format. AIFF is the format on
the actual CD. if you want your copy to sound EXACTLY like the original,
go with that. the other formats, AAC, MP3, Lossless, etc., can be used,
but expect some audio differences. the advantage to the compressed
formats is, obviously, the size they take up. also, if you intend to
store the files on your ipod, you'll want to use something like AAC.

In article <C045FEC1.1A87%spat@mchsi.com>, spat <spat@mchsi.com> wrote:

> I am very confused about the various audio formats that you can set iTunes
> to import songs from CDs. I have OS 10.4.5 and iTunes 6.0.4, and I want to
> import songs from CDs like the first Weezer CD so that I can create a mix CD
> of various songs from various artists to play on my Toyota Camry CD player
> and my home stereo CD player. I read the iTunes Help files to figure out
> which format to use to import songs, and I decided to use Apple Lossless.
> Is that the right one to burn CDs for use in regular CD players (not
> computer CD players)?
>
> However, even after setting it to import songs as Apple Lossless, it still
> seems to import them as MPEG-4 AAC because the imported songs' file suffix
> in my iTunes folder is .m4a and the Kind column says they are MPEG-4 Audio
> Files. In addition, the Help file says that "The High Quality AAC setting
> creates files that are usually less than 1 MB for each minute of music," but
> the songs imported are between 20 and 35 MB each (the original AIFF files on
> the CD are between 27 and 80 MB). What am I doing wrong?

Apple lossless compression is odd in that there already is a perfectly
good lossless compression standard in the rest of the world called FLAC.
Apple's lossless seems to be AAC specially rigged to only do redundancy
reduction and no psycho-acoustic compression. Redundancy reduction will
compress sound to about half the original size. P-A is how you achieve
substantial size reductions.

I use Max to rip CDs because it supposely rips with fewer errors due to
scratches, etc. I also rip CDs as soon as I get them. I rip them to FLAC
and keep a copy of the FLACs. I then make mp3 versions from the FLACs at
320 b/s because my CD player will not play AAC. At high bitrates the
difference between AAC quality and mp3 quality is less than at low
bitrates. You should probably encode your songs as high bitrate mp3s
because this is compatible with more hardware and you will not notice
the difference.

Data on CDs is about 10meg/minute per channel so lossless brings that
down to 5meg.

Its worth noting that Joint Stereo is evil and should be avoided.

In article <C045FEC1.1A87%spat@mchsi.com>, spat <spat@mchsi.com> wrote:

> I am very confused about the various audio formats that you can set iTunes
> to import songs from CDs. I have OS 10.4.5 and iTunes 6.0.4, and I want to
> import songs from CDs like the first Weezer CD so that I can create a mix CD
> of various songs from various artists to play on my Toyota Camry CD player
> and my home stereo CD player. I read the iTunes Help files to figure out
> which format to use to import songs, and I decided to use Apple Lossless.
> Is that the right one to burn CDs for use in regular CD players (not
> computer CD players)?
>
> However, even after setting it to import songs as Apple Lossless, it still
> seems to import them as MPEG-4 AAC because the imported songs' file suffix
> in my iTunes folder is .m4a and the Kind column says they are MPEG-4 Audio
> Files. In addition, the Help file says that "The High Quality AAC setting
> creates files that are usually less than 1 MB for each minute of music," but
> the songs imported are between 20 and 35 MB each (the original AIFF files on
> the CD are between 27 and 80 MB). What am I doing wrong?

Apple lossless compression is odd in that there already is a perfectly
good lossless compression standard in the rest of the world called FLAC.
Apple's lossless seems to be AAC specially rigged to only do redundancy
reduction and no psycho-acoustic compression. Redundancy reduction will
compress sound to about half the original size. P-A is how you achieve
substantial size reductions.

I use Max to rip CDs because it supposely rips with fewer errors due to
scratches, etc. I also rip CDs as soon as I get them. I rip them to FLAC
and keep a copy of the FLACs. I then make mp3 versions from the FLACs at
320 b/s because my CD player will not play AAC. At high bitrates the
difference between AAC quality and mp3 quality is less than at low
bitrates. You should probably encode your songs as high bitrate mp3s
because this is compatible with more hardware and you will not notice
the difference.

Data on CDs is about 10meg/minute per channel so lossless brings that
down to 5meg.

Its worth noting that Joint Stereo is evil and should be avoided.