I posted some months ago with regard to converting music files, after playing with my USB turntable. To cut a long story short, yesterday I found a reference to using iTunes to burn a music CD in the brief guide I got with it, so I have installed iTunes and managed to burn an audio CD with a bit of huffing and swearing.
I have also managed to create an account on the iTunes store, after again having a faff with a UK issued credit card registered to a foreign address, which for some reason they didn't like. All I wanted to do was download some album artwork for one album, which turned out not to be there anyway :-(
I've never come across such a difficult piece of software to get started with as iTunes. There doesn't even seem to be a help option, which I'm guessing therefore is on the Apple website. Anyone got any ideas where to find a nice simple guide? All I want to use it for is organising the existing music on my desktop (Windows Vista btw).
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If you have no iPhone then you steer well clear of iTunes. Its not wanted, its not needed and its not funny.
Media Monkey is probably the most easy to use
www.mediamonkey.com
and use MP3TAG to sort out the meta tags and album artwork.
www.mp3tag.de/en/
Last edited by: Zero on Sun 16 Nov 14 at 17:56
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>> If you have no iPhone then you steer well clear of iTunes. Its not wanted,
>> its not needed and its not funny.
I have no iPod, iPhone, iPad and no need for any of them. I'll try one of your suggestions when I have a little more time. It was mentioned in the instructions for the USB turntable as being a suitable repository for the music transcribed from LP to digital, and seemed a good idea at the time. Probably just needs a different mindset.
Thanks for the help anyway. I'll sit around now and wait for someone to tell me it's indispensible :-)
Last edited by: Mike H on Sun 16 Nov 14 at 18:08
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You just can't help some people.
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>> You just can't help some people.
>>
I wasn't being funny, I appreciated the help. As I said in my reply to Mark, looks like I simply picked a sledgehammer to crack a walnut.
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+1
What Zero said ^
I received a new company phone on Thursday, iPhone, they'd even written to me saying it would be an HTC android and I got this heap. I nearly dropped it down the stairs today, accidentally you understand.
I thought android phones were juicy but this iPhone needs charging twice a day when it's doing nothing !!! Glad I didn't waste my money on one.
Last edited by: gmac on Sun 16 Nov 14 at 18:12
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+1 what Zero said.
You need to control the source data. So, you should burn it to your PC in a generic, open and lossless format.
Having done that, you can now, and pretty much forever as far as we know, do what you wish with it. Including pushing it into iTunes.
However, if you hold your source data in iTunes, you have now restricted the superset of your possibilities.
Simplistically;
lossless is perhaps a quality index of 10.
iTunes is perhaps a quality index of 5.
Product X, yet to be invented, is a quality index of 7.
If you have burned a lossless copy, you retain the quality choice of iTunes or unknown product of the future.
If you have burned direct to iTunes, how will you ever take advantage of the future product?
To all intents and purposes you cannot increase the quality of the recording you have burned, although you can reduce it.
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>> You need to control the source data. So, you should burn it to your PC
>> in a generic, open and lossless format.
...which is what I did.
>> Having done that, you can now, and pretty much forever as far as we know,
>> do what you wish with it. Including pushing it into iTunes.
...which is what I tried to do, but couldn't give a damn about where it is. I don't particularly want it in iTunes. All I was trying to do was burn an audio CD, and it seemed at the time to be a straightforward way of creating an audio CD from a wma file because it was suggested by the software that came with the USB turntable.
>> However, if you hold your source data in iTunes, you have now restricted the superset
>> of your possibilities.
>>
>> Simplistically;
>> lossless is perhaps a quality index of 10.
>> iTunes is perhaps a quality index of 5.
>> Product X, yet to be invented, is a quality index of 7.
>>
>> If you have burned a lossless copy, you retain the quality choice of iTunes or
>> unknown product of the future.
No idea, is wma format lossless?
>> If you have burned direct to iTunes, how will you ever take advantage of the
>> future product?
I didn't burn it into iTunes, just wanted to use iTunes as above.
>> To all intents and purposes you cannot increase the quality of the recording you have
>> burned, although you can reduce it.
>>
True, sounds sensible.
Looks like I picked a sledgehammer to crack a walnut :-(
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WMA is lossless.
Essentially there are various methods one can use to compress an audio file. the principle being to make the file size smaller without removing any stuff that you could actually hear.
The trouble is, as technology and hardware improves, what you can actually hear changes. Not for me, as it happens, I think I don't have a good ear for this stuff and MP3 sound find to me, but my sister swears by the difference.
Nonetheless, hear it or not, a file size is reduced by cutting bits out. Lossless means cutting nothing.
Having got it on to you computer (and apologies, I didn't realise that you already had), then burning is a different matter.
It pretty much doesn't matter what you use, and I use Windows Media Player, provided that you never sacrifice your original data.
I use Media Player because I find the indexing really easy to deal with, and the CD burning dead easy.
Use iPlayer if it works for you. I find it tedious, my wife loves it.
I think that unless you are using Apple products, its just an unnecessary complication.
Products like Media Player sort trtacks according to their metadata. Metadata is information attached to the track such as album, track number, artists etc. etc.
Products like MP3Tag allow you to edit that metadata easily snuring that things like Media Player sort your tracks appropriately.
No biggie, to be honest, with burned CDs. Its more relevant with downloaded music.
Interpreting your needs I would simply add the directory that you have burned into to Windows Media Player, and then drag and drop to create audio CDs.
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Thanks for your clear and comprehensive reply Mark. Looks like your last paragraph says it all! Sounds like the easiest thing thing to do with iTunes is ignore it.
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WMA is not lossless unless it is WMA Lossless.
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>>WMA is not lossless unless it is WMA Lossless.
Of course, sorry I wasn't clear. And I think its important to make sure you use lossless.
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>>Thanks for your clear and comprehensive reply Mark.
It'd have been clearer if I could either type or proof read. Sorry.
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>> If you have no iPhone then you steer well clear of iTunes. Its not wanted,
>> its not needed and its not funny.
>>
>> Media Monkey is probably the most easy to use
>>
>> www.mediamonkey.com
>>
>> and use MP3TAG to sort out the meta tags and album artwork.
>>
>> www.mp3tag.de/en/
>>
Same here, indeed MediaMonkey seems to be the only way I can manage the music on a friend's iPod so it only has what music she wants on it, not what frickin' iTunes tries to synch to it.
Easiest way to burn an audio CD on any Windows PC: Windows explorer -> highlight the music files to be burnt -> right click -> send to - select your optical drive -> select burn as audio CD. job done.
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Take some advice. Stick to CDs. Or Spotify. There isn't a device yet built that handles music files as well as physical items.
And as for using an Apple application if you don't have to... why would you ever do that to yourself! (I note you're not doing so any longer.)
I have, for the record, an iPhone. And I have no need to back it up ever as it's too complicated to get valuable things off it there's no point in putting them on in the first place...
Stick to Spotify. (Which has its faults too.)
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Getting started with iTunes - Zero
