iPod Managing lossless files in library

[mdickson]

So here's my situation,

I have a rather large library of mp3 and aac files.

Last week, I decided to start adding lossless audio files to my library. I've done this now for about 1300 songs. Obviously, the songs I chose to add as lossless first were already in my library as mp3's beforehand.

Now, when browsing my library, the lossless and lossy copies of the songs are "stacked" on top of each other in such a way where the track listing of an album looks like this:

Purple Haze
Purple Haze
Manic Depression
Manic Depression
Hey Joe
Hey Joe



I don't really like the way this is happening in my library, for obvious reasons. I want to keep the lossy files for a few reasons, among them: for my iPhone and nano. All my lossless files will go on my classic.

I'm sure I'm not the first person to want to find a better way to organize a library when mixing lossless and lossy files.

Does anybody have any suggestions?

 

[phairphan]

I think the CW around here for dealing with this is to maintain two separate libraries: one for your lossy files and one for the lossless. Just do a forum search for itunes and separate libraries. You should find something that explains this in detail.

 

[mdickson]

Thanks for your reply.

Maintaining two separate libraries doesn't seem like something I should have to do. I want to have all of my music, tv shows and movies all accessible.

I also want to be able to sync all my lossless files and certain lossy files if I don't have a lossless rip of them.

 

[GermanSuplex]

This is what I did:

All of my lossless files are Apple Lossless, so I simply created a smartplaylist with rules "Playlist is Music" and "Kind does not contain Lossless" and I used that playlist just as I originally used the default Music section.

I then unchecked all of my lossless files, which you may or may not want to do. But on my equipment, listening to mp3 or lossless makes no difference. I only keep lossless around for archival and convenience purposes (no more getting the cd out).

 

[wpc33]

I have tons of lossless files, and an iPod. I convert to mp3, drag the new encodes onto the iPod, delete the mp3's from my computer, and keep a clone of the iPod on its own partition of my backup drive.
If anything goes wrong, I can use SuperDuper or whathaveyou, to back up. I can even use ipoddisk to mount my backup in the finder as a navigatable volume.

 

[Consultant]

There is a script that converts high quality files to lossy files for ipod sync
http://dougscripts.com/itunes/