[daves666]

Most of my music has been ripped at 200-300 kbps which is fine for listening on my iMac or 20G iPod. But just got a 4G Nano where space is more of an issue.

So I would love to convert the music I copy over to the Nano down to 128 AAC files, without losing the higher quality versions. Any suggestions on how to set this up elegantly in a single iTunes library? I know I can convert using iTunes but that leaves me with 2 copies of the same file cluttering up my library.

Thanks in advance!

[wilsonng]

That was the beauty of the shuffle. It would automatically transcode your music files down to 128 AAC before transferring it over the shuffle.

I wished iTunes had an iPod preferences option to tell iTunes to transcode to this iPod if desired.

[mduell]

I'm surprised iTunes doesn't do this yet, and I'd expect to see it added soon (since Apple keeps adding low capacity players).
Even Windows Media Player will do this (I use it for my PDA).

[daves666]

Is nobody else facing this issue?

The only solutions that come to mind are to either create a special separate downsampled library for the Nano, or to simply live with duplicate songs in the main library. Neither route seems optimal though...oh well.

[icruise]

How much space do you think this would save you on your nano? Personally, I wouldn't bother.

[daves666]

Maybe you're right: not worth it. But the difference in file size between a song encoded at 320 VS 128 kbps is about 50% [128 file is 50% smaller]. So that's twice as much music you could cram into the Nano by downsampling.

[wilsonng]

i don't bother with downsampling.

I use my full-sized iPod for my album listening and then use the nano for my hit singles listening ---- two different ways ot listening to music.

I'd love to get an 8 GB nano but it's not in existence at this time.

The full-sized iPod is used when I am an a cross-country trek on the road or in the air. Then I'll switch to the nano when I want a change of pace or if I'm working out.

I've learned to use the combination of iPods similar to how some footballs teams have learned to utilize two running backs to win the game.... Pittsburgh has Deuce Staley, Jerome Bettis, and Willie Parker. Denver has Mike Anderson and Tatum Bell, and Kansas City has Priest Holmes and Larry Johnson. These are different running backs with different styles used in different parts of the game.

[daves666]

Thanks...but what if you don't own any hit singles?

[wilsonng]

How about your favorite tracks from your CD collection? That will work. There's mostly like a few clunkers that you don't like on any given CD. But there are the rare ones which you love from start to end.

I encode my music at 160 kbps Highest VBR and so it averages between 180-200 kbps. I am also using 192 kbps AAC. I have 26 photos and 521 songs on the iPod. I think that's plenty to put on. That's about 50 hours (or 2 days) of music to listen to. If the average CD is about 1 hour long, that's 50 CDs right there.

I don't mind updating the nano every 3-4 days because of its small size.

well, if you want duplicate songs, you can always put your library on a bigger external hard drive.

I agree, there is no "optimal" solution for organizing songs at different bitrates.

[Drakino]

I think we all just need to hit the iTunes feedback and ask for the 128 AAC transcoding option the iPod Shuffle has to be added to the iPod Nano as well. It's already coded most of the way, it just now needs to be exposed in one more place.

I am in a similar situation with very high bit rate MP3s. My Nano can hold only about 400 songs, and I have the 4gb version.

[icruise]

So how does this transcoding work with the shuffle? Is it on the fly? Wouldn't that add a lot to sync times?

[Phat Bastard]

Isn't it obvious that if you want to keep the original track and your converted one they'll be kept as two separate files? There's no way around the duplicate files and this "clutter" in your library.

What you could do is make smart playlists for your original and converted tracks that are filtered based on bit rate, and then sync your nano with just the converted track playlist.

p.s. what's the need to keep 300 kbps files??? Isn't 192 sufficient??

[Phat Bastard]

(duplicate post)

[Drakino]

Originally Posted by Phat Bastard

p.s. what's the need to keep 300 kbps files??? Isn't 192 sufficient??

For the iPod, maybe. But my first MP3 device was a high end car stereo with hard drives for storage. Hooked to an external amplifier and decent speakers, 192 was even too low, and thats what most of my collection was at that point. After that, I switched to LAME to encode with VBR 1 setting. The files are bigger, but now I can't hear the difference in the car.

[daves666]

Exactly the point Drakino. I think a lot of us are at the point where we use these digital music files in a variety of contexts and equipment. Low bitrate files are perfect for more casual listening on Nano/Shuffle; higher bitrate files are nice in situations where audio fidelity is more important [like playing an iPod through better stereo eqipment].

Any other suggestions on how to set iTunes up to deal with this?

[daves666]

Dup Post

[daves666]

Triple post - should I go for 4? Forgot to take my meds...

[daves666]

Well, for the record [and hopefully just once this time], here's how I went about migrating some of my 75 Gig music collection onto my 4 Gig Nano:

• 1 Core Playlist with essential stuff [about 1 Gig]

• 1 Playlist with recently acquired music [about 500K]

• A set of 6 Smart Playlists [of varying sizes] from my favorite genres with conditions 5-star, 128 kbps, shorter than 5 minutes. Every once in a while I update these smart playlists and resync with new selections.

Works well so far. Hopefully other people in the same situtaion will find this usefull.

Cheers!

[Vsx1]

Hello everyone!

My wife received her Nano (black, 2 GB, engraved) yesterday and once I installed iTunes (5), and fiddled with the Nano and iTunes I can't easily convert my 2000 song, 45 GB collection to the Nano to improve capacity like I can with my Shuffle (512).

From the start I've encoded my CD collection to Apple Lossless so I can convert the files back to CD quality to play on my stereo with maximum fidelity (hence the low song count for the space mentioned earlier). iTunes should not behave any different across models with respect to audio. Capacity has always been an issue and not being able to convert my song from Apple Lossless to AAC is gonna suck for the Nano. Currently I can hold more songs on my Shuffle than the 4x capacity Nano (120 vs 70). The Autofill feature is also missing. Lets lobby Apple to keep the interface the same across all models with respect to audio. Bring back "convert to AAC" and "Autofill"!!!

[blues02]

I was about to post this question. Damn that sucks that you can't do auto-conversion with the nano. Why not put that in iTunes as a standard option? Oh well I may still get the 4GB model.