iPod & Music CDs

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I've been an iMac user for about for about two years, converted from PC. My wife and I have purchased a new plasma TV and theater surround system. The system includes an iPod dock. Would it make sense to transfer all our music CDs to an iPod for use with the new system? I'd really like to box the CDs up and get them out of the living room anyway. I don't know much about iPods. Would I have to copy the CDs into iTunes and then transfer them to the iPod? If so, would I be able to set them up in categories such as, 'Pop', 'Country', 'Jazz', etc...?

Thanks, your help will be appreciated.
 

cwa107


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Absolutely. An iPod syncs up with iTunes, which is the software on your Mac that you'll use to import those CDs.

iTunes will essentially 'rip' the music off the discs, identify the tracks (and even cover art) and put them in a music library stored on your Mac. Then, it's a simple matter of plugging in an iPod. At that point, the iPod syncs up with iTunes and your entire music collection is now portable.
 
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Yes, you insert a cd in to your mac, and if it connected to the internet, iTunes will find the album and insert, the artist, track names and genre for you.

Then you just import the album into itunes, then each album you add should sync with the ipod
 

bobtomay

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Yes, two settings related to categories.

The first is genre. Most will import Album title, tracknames and genre. They don't always get it right, so you may need to change some. Example one of my favorite artists first 3 or 4 albums were folk and then in his later career ventured into jazz. Even those jazz albums are put into the folk category because that is what the artist is classified as.

The second is playlists. You can set up a playlist of each category you would like and then assign songs or albums to that category. This gives you the ability to play only songs from a particular playlist.

Sounds like you have some work, albeit fun work ahead of you.
 
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Doug in Alaska
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Thanks everyone your help! When I first got the iMac, I imported ten or twelve albums but that was quite a while ago. If I listen to music on the mac it is usually a radio station, the album music is my wife's thing. She has an iPod (nano I believe) but carries it with her daily so we're thinking it would be nice to have a second iPod with all our albums for here at the house. Looks like I've got my work cut out for me. I have a 500 GB hard drive and am wondering if fifty or sixty albums is going to take a lot of space on the drive?

Thanks again!
 

cwa107


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50 or 60 albums shouldn't even take up a fraction of that drive :)

The average song in high quality should be less than 10MB. Figure a max of 20 tracks on most CDs (20MB), times 60 would be 1.2GB. And that's grossly overestimated.
 

bobtomay

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My rips, as a general rule of thumb are in the 150 MB range per album ripped at 256 kbps or higher. Most songs are in the 5 - 10 MB range. Puts 60 albums in the 6 -10 GB maximum range. Rip to mp3 and would be even better.
 

cwa107


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Oops, my math was a little off :)

10x20 would be 200MB (not 20MB ;) ) X 60 would be 12GB.

And they say kids shouldn't be given calculators in schools.... :D
 
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Doug in Alaska
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Thanks again everyone! Now I'll get to work.
 

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