Adding Music from Audio CDs and the Internet to Your iTunes Music LibraryListening to audio CDs with iTunes is fine, but for that purpose, any old CD player works just as well. iTunes' real power comes when you add all your music to the Library so it is always available to you. In addition to letting you find and listen to your music more easily, after it is in the Library, you can do all sorts of cool things with it, such as creating custom playlists and CDs. Converting Audio CDs into the MP3 Format and Adding Them to Your Music LibraryThe MP3 format was the one that really started the digital music revolution. Although newer and somewhat better formats are available now, MP3 remains an important player in the digital music world. Understanding the MP3 FormatMP3 is the acronym for the audio compression scheme called Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) audio layer 3. The revolutionary aspect of the MP3 encoding scheme is that music data can be stored in files that are only about one twelfth the size of unencoded digital music without a noticeable degradation in the quality of the music. A typical music CD consumes about 650MB of storage space, but the same music encoded in the MP3 format shrinks down to about 55MB. Put another way, a single 3.5-minute song shrinks from its 35MB on audio CD down to a paltry 3MB or so. This small file size opens up a world of possibilities. The other aspect of MP3 that has made it so amazingly popular is that converting different music formats into MP3 is very easy. These two factors alone have forever changed the way music is made, distributed, and listened to. The first, and most famous (or infamous depending on your point of view), is the capability to move music files over the Internet. Although downloading a 35MB file is prohibitive for everyone except those who have access to high-bandwidth connections, moving a 3MB MP3 file is practical for just about everyone. In addition to the controversial practice of sharing music (sometimes copyrighted music), MP3 over the Internet also has more legitimate uses. Artists can create MP3 music and distribute it over the Internet without requiring that they sign with a record company. This makes self-promotion possible and can eliminate the middleman from the music arena. As never before, music can move directly from the musician to anyone anywhere in the world.
A second benefit of MP3 files' small size is that storing an entire music collection in a relatively small amount of disk space is possible, thus eliminating the need to bother with individual CDs. An entire music collection can be easily stored, organized, and accessed with a few clicks of a mouse. By using playlists, that music can be listened to in many ways. Third, MP3 created a new class of portable music devices. Because MP3 files can be stored in small amounts of memory, devices with no moving parts can store and play a decent amount of music. Other devices contain small hard drives and can store huge amounts of music, enabling you to take your entire music collection with you wherever you go. These devices are extremely small and lightweight, and their contents can be easily managed. Following are the two main sources of MP3 music to which you can listen:
The more important source of MP3 files for your iTunes Library is your own audio CD collection. You can encode the music on your audio CDs into the MP3 format and add those MP3 files to your music Library (and then add the songs to any playlists you want). In iTunes lingo, this is called importing music. In more general lingo, this process is called ripping tracks. Either way, creating MP3 tracks from your audio CDs is really powerful. CAUTION Some audio CDs use copyright protection schemes that prevent you from listening to the CD on a computer (with the idea being that you won't be able to make MP3 versions of the songs for illegal purposes). Unfortunately, not only do these CDs not work in your Mac, but they can actually cause damage. Before playing a CD in your Mac, check the label carefully to make sure its label doesn't contain any warnings about playing the CD in a computer or that the CD is copy-protected. If it does, don't try to use the CD in your Mac. Encoding audio CDs into MP3 files is straightforward. The only complexity you will encounter is the choice of specific encoding settings you want to use. Setting MP3 Import PreferencesAlthough the default MP3 encoding settings are probably fine, you should understand that you can make adjustments to the particular encoding settings iTunes uses to convert your music to MP3. The reason you might want to do this is to get the smallest file sizes possible while retaining an acceptable quality of playback. The quality of encoded music is determined by the amount of data stored in the MP3 file per second of music playback. This is measured in kilobits per second (Kbps). The higher the number of Kbps, the better the music sounds. Of course, this means that the file size is larger as well. The goal of MP3 encoding is to obtain an acceptable quality of playback while minimizing the size of the resulting MP3 files. The encoding level you should use depends on several factors, which include the following:
iTunes provides three standard levels of encoding: good quality, high quality, and higher quality. As an experiment, I encoded the same 4-minute song using each of these levels; the results are shown in Table 16.1. These results might or might not match the particular encoding you do, but they should give you some idea of the effect of quality level settings on file sizes. In this case, I couldn't detect much difference between the quality levels in the sound of the music, so I could save almost 0.5MB per minute of music by using the good quality level.
You can also use custom encoding levels if the standard levels aren't suitable for you. The encoding settings iTunes uses are accessed with the Preferences command:
TIP You can vary the quality level you use from album to album or even from song to song. For example, if you want to play certain songs on a portable MP3 player, you might want to use a lower level for those songs so you can download more of them to the player. You might want to create one version of the tracks at low-quality levels and another version at high-quality levels. You could then create a lower-quality playlist to import to an MP3 player. You can also create and use custom encoding levels if the standard choices aren't suitable. You configure custom encoding with the same steps you use for standard encoding. The difference is that you select Custom on the Setting pop-up menu. When you do that, the MP3 Encoder dialog box appears. This enables you to configure the following:
Adding Music in the MP3 Format to Your LibraryTo encode music from an audio CD into the MP3 format, use the following steps:
Following are some pointers to improve your importing experiences:
Downloading MP3 Files from the Internet and Adding Them to Your iTunes Music LibraryAlthough illegal sharing of MP3 files is done over the Internet, there are also many legitimate sites from which you can download MP3 files to listen to. You might wonder why musicians would post their music in MP3 format on such sites. One reason is that they feel a desire to freely share their music with the world. Another reason is that musicians hope that, when you listen to their music, you will like it so much that you will purchase more of it (usually on audio CDs). Either way, you win because plenty of great music is available in the MP3 format that you can listen to. Downloading MP3 MusicTo find sites from which you can download MP3 files, I recommend that you start at www.mp3.com. This site has thousands of songs you can listen to online and download to your Mac. You can browse music by genre and search for music. Whichever way you do it, you are likely to find more music to listen to than you have time to listen to! TIP The mp3.com music site enables you to preview songs before you download them. You should take advantage of this to prevent wasting the time required to download music you don't like and will end up deleting later anyway. Downloading MP3 files is done in the same way as other files.
To learn how to download files from the Web, p. 411. Configuring iTunes to Keep Your Music OrganizedLater in this chapter, you'll learn in detail how and where iTunes stores the music you add to your Library. For now, know that you should have iTunes store files you download in the same way as those you encode yourself. Here's how:
Adding Downloaded Music to the LibraryAfter you have configured iTunes to store the music you add in an organized way, add the music to your library:
NOTE If you have unchecked the "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" check box for some reason, you see a dialog box explaining that iTunes doesn't actually move the files but uses a reference to the files you choose. (If this check box is checked, iTunes does make a copy and places it in the appropriate location.) Just read the information in the dialog box and click OK. TIP You can also add music to the iTunes Library by dragging song files onto the iTunes icon on the Dock. Converting Audio CDs into the AAC Format and Adding Them to Your Music LibraryLike most other file formats, there are more than one digital music file format. One of the newest formats is the AAC format. Understanding the AAC FormatWith the release of iTunes version 4, Apple introduced a new audio format called Advanced Audio Coding (AAC). The AAC format is part of the larger MPEG-4 specification. The basic purpose of it is the same as the MP3 format: to deliver excellent sound quality while keeping file sizes small. However, the AAC format produces files that have better quality than MP3 at even smaller file sizes. Also like MP3, you can easily convert audio CD files into the AAC format. One of the most important aspects of the AAC format is that all the music in the Apple Music Store is stored in this format; when you purchase music from the store, it is downloaded in this format. AAC files have the .m4p filename extension. Functionally, you aren't likely to notice any difference between AAC music files and MP3 files except in one area most music players (such as MP3 players) don't support AAC-formatted music. The Apple iPod is a notable exception, so any music you purchase from the Apple Music Store can be placed on an iPod for playing on the move. You can also convert music in the AAC format into the MP3 format to put that music on regular MP3 players. (You'll learn how to do this later in this chapter.) Setting AAC Import PreferencesAlso similar to MP3, various settings can be configured to adjust the way in which files are imported in the AAC format. Unlike MP3, there are only two choices for AAC importing options: High Quality and Custom. Do the following:
Importing Music from Audio CDs in the AAC Format to Your LibraryAfter you have selected and configured the Import preferences, the steps to import music from Audio CDs in the AAC format into your Library are exactly the same as those you use to import tracks in the MP3 format.
To learn how to import tracks from audio CDs to your Library, p. 535. |