iPod How to maintain two libraries?

[hualon]

I think that the title is probably misleading. Here's what I have:

One iTunes library with about 500GB of Apple Lossless music.
One Logitech Squeezebox
iPods, iPhones, etc.

Here's what I want to do:
I want to make a library of compressed tracks (AAC) to sync on my phones, iPods, etc.

I want the Squeezebox to only stream the lossless files.

I know how to make copies of the existing tracks and convert them to AAC but I don't know how best to manage it. Two libraries? Checking/Unchecking?

How would you do it?

 

[Le Big Mac]

Smart playlist using filetype?

 

[ethical]

Yeah I think you would be best with two libraries there. It'll be a pain I reckon to have a duplicate of every song in you iTunes, and to have to check half of them to get them to do what you want. However Le Big Mac suggests a good idea that should work, if you don't want two libraries

To create a second library, hold down 'alt' when you open iTunes, until a box pops up with the option to create a new library.

 

[JonHimself]

If managing two libraries of music is at all comparable to having one music and one video library then I'd suggest having just one library if you have the space for it. I'm in the middle of working a way to best consolidate my music library on my mbp with a separate library of my movies/tv shows I have on a NAS and it's annoying.
The biggest problem is that my laptop drive isn't 2TB so it's a matter of figuring out how to have one library in one location but still be able to sync the video to Apple TV and music the my iPhone easily.
If you have the space to keep lossless and AAC files in one library on your hard drive, I'd do that then just figure out a way to manage it with playlists. Having to check and uncheck isn't that big of a problem. If the album was, for instance 'My War', if you imported the lossless version, then converted down to AAC, you could search 'My War Apple Lossless' and only the apple lossless files would show up, then option + click on the check box and they'd all be unselected at once leaving the AAC versions still selected. It might be a pain for everything already in your library, but as you add stuff it won't be too hard.

 

[sbking]

Hmm, I always keep the lossless files on my PC and remove the AAC files after dragging them to my iPod.

Anyway, I agree with the smart playlist suggestion, one with the rule "Kind is Apple Lossless audio file" and the other with the rules "Kind is AAC audio file" and "Kind is MPEG audio file"

 

[devburke]

Hmm, I always keep the lossless files on my PC and remove the AAC files after dragging them to my iPod.

The problem with that, of course, is that it won’t work if you have iTunes automatically sync your music. I used to do manual too, but I switched to automatic when I started using smart playlists like “Not Recently Played” that relied on metadata and library data staying in sync. Plus I’ve found it’s just easier this way. I can always edit the data on a track and not have to worry about deleting and updating the one on my iPod. It helps with manual playlists too, but I don’t use those all that much, so that’s not as big of a reason for me. But really it just makes everything easy and thoughtless

 

[Le Big Mac]

The problem with that, of course, is that it won’t work if you have iTunes automatically sync your music. I used to do manual too, but I switched to automatic when I started using smart playlists like “Not Recently Played” that relied on metadata and library data staying in sync.

Make every smart playlist with the added condition that the song is in either the AAC playlist or the Lossless playlist. You could really make two copies of each playlist this way, changing only that one condition.

 

[devburke]

Make every smart playlist with the added condition that the song is in either the AAC playlist or the Lossless playlist. You could really make two copies of each playlist this way, changing only that one condition.

Yeah but that wouldn’t solve the problem. If I listen to a song on my iPod, I want iTunes to recognize that it’s been played and remove update the “Last Played” on my computer, removing it from the playlist.

Really I was talking about why I prefer to automatically sync, rather than manually.