iTunes. removing music and starting over...

Hi all, my first post so hello to everyone

I imported all my music via a direct link from my PC to the Mac. I had to convert all my WMA's to MP3's first and then did it.

Not sure why, but lots of albums only have one track in each folder and loads of artwork is missing. So iTunes looks pretty rubbish when I open it up presently.

I was thinking of deleting all the music and starting from scratch with fresh burn imports on all my music (gulps).

How can I best go about this please?

What bit rate do you advise when ripping and how can I be sure to have deleted all my current music and thumbnails etc?

Would deleting and reinstalling iTunes do this?

Thanks.

Nick

Actually, that's a very good idea and it won't be that difficult. Just do a few CDs each evening and before you know it you will be done.

For mainstream rock/pop music, the "iTunes Plus" setting of 256kbps AAC should be fine. You may want to go to 320 if you prefer.

For really critical digital transfer, you will want to use ALC (Apple Lossless Codec). The files are WAY bigger than compressed files, so I recommend this only for Classical/Jazz/other forms of very subtle or wide-ranging sounds where fidelity is crucial to the listening experience.

You don't need to delete iTunes at all, in fact that would be completely counter-productive. You can create multiple iTunes libraries, so all you need to do in this case is start a new one. You do this by launching iTunes with the option key held down, then creating a new library in whatever location you wish. This will be the (empty at first) default library, but you can go back to the "old" one by repeating the process and instead of creating a new library, just selecting the old one.

If you have the space, you can keep both around. Otherwise, once you're confident that you're building your new library successfully, you can delete the old one. To avoid confusion, be sure to name the new library something different than the old one.

Thank you for the response Chas!

I'll probably go for 256/320 thanks as I just listen on a 2.1 desktop Logitech system. I will stream it to a Logitech squeezebox radio from time to time.

I think then that I just need to delete all my old music and re-rip the new. I have all the original music on my PC still, so no need to keep both for a time.

What about all the old album art, is that worth deleting too, it will it just reintegrate when I rip the new library?

I just like the idea of a clean start I guess.

Many thanks,

Nick

nick_j007 said:

Thank you for the response Chas!
What about all the old album art, is that worth deleting too, it will it just reintegrate when I rip the new library?

Click to expand...

As you rip your CDs again, iTunes will automatically supply the album art for any albums it knows about. Albums it does not know about won't get artwork, but it's not difficult to find using Google IME.

Just a quick return to say many thanks for the help on this. I shall address it over the Xmas holidays.

Nick