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Mac Itunes File Organization?

I'm a newbie to Itunes on Mac. I just got my mini two nights ago and I'm very happy with it. I've got a lot of CD's to rip and I'm looking for advice on how to organize the files. What are the pros and cons of letting Itunes organize the files vs. trying to organize them myself.

I've got an external hard drive with over 50 CD's worth of .wav files that I ripped on a PC with audiograbber and EAC. The songs are organized on the hard drive by artist, then by album, then by song title. Itunes will play these files fine but the Itunes library organization treats the artist and song title as one title, with nothing in the other fields. I'm willing to re-rip these CD's, if necessary, but I'm looking to set up a good strategy first.

I'm willing to stick with .wav files as hard drive space is cheap and getting cheaper. Will there be any problems loading the .wav files onto an Ipod?

Any advice from the other Itunes users out there before I get started?
pmi_guy

Showing 2 responses by restock

restock
831 posts
 
To correct my earlier post: I guess itunes CAN attach tags to AIFF files. There is thread on the slim devices forum:

AIFF/WAV & ID tags
restock
831 posts
 
You just encountered the biggest downside of WAV - there is no "meta data" included in the files, i.e. no artist or song information. What does that mean for files stored on external hard drives:

- If you WAV on an external hard drive and you import these, none of the info will be displayed in iTunes (except for the filename). Of course you can reenter all that info into iTunes, but if for some reason you would like to use that hard drive on a different computer or system, or if you loose your library, all that info is gone.

- If you use apple lossless files, all the info is stored with the file, that is you import it into any itunes on any computer and all info will show.

Given that both are lossless, there really is no question which one I would use. And if you worried you can always convert the files (that you want to listen to) to WAV before a critical listening session.

AIFF does NOT have tags either, only Lossless, FLAC, AAC, MP3 do.
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