When you have more than one computer and more than one iPhone or iPod there are various ways to sync your iTunes songs across all your devices.  This article outlines them all.

Option 1: iTunes Library sharing

+ Simple, Free.

- Both Computers must be on. Songs can’t be copied.  iPhone syncing  can only be done manually to one computer.

ITUNES SHARING LETS YOU PLAY SONGS FROM ONE COMPUTER TO ANOTHER.

If you go to the preferences menu of iTunes and click on the sharing tab you can turn on ‘Sharing’  of your iTunes library.  This means that any other computer with iTunes on the same network as your Macintosh  can see and play the songs from your iTunes library. You can’t copy the songs from one computer to the other,  so for this to work both computers must be turned on AND HAVE ITUNES RUNNING.

The simplest way to share files to other computers on your network: share your iTunes library from the iTunes preferences.

After you share your library a  new entry will appear in your iTunes window on all other computers on your network under ‘SHARED’  and  will see  the entire iTunes library from your other computer. You can click on and play any song -  they will stream from your other computer. Streaming simply  means the song is played over the network but it is not copied to the 2nd computer,  so after you have finished listening to the song it is gone from your 2nd computer.  If the 1st computer is turned off you do not have access to the song any more.

 Option 2: Apple home sharing

+ Simple, Free, You can copy songs between computers.

- iPhone syncing is still manually to one computer.

The next step up is Apple Home Sharing.  It requires you to enter your iTunes ID and password,  and is limited to 5 computers, but it will then allow you to copy songs between computers that are on your  ’Apple Home Sharing’  account.

1. To turn on Apple Home Sharing go to the advanced menu on your iTunes application and click on ‘ Turn on Home Sharing’. It  will ask you for your Apple ID which is the ID that you registered up with the iTunes store.  You can register up to 5 computers on the same Apple ID. You need to manually sync your iPhone or iPad to one of your computers.

2. If you want a song to permanently copy across to your 2nd computer select the song and click on ‘ import’. This will copy the song across to your 2nd computer so that you can play it when the 1st computer is off.

Option 3: iTunes Match.

+ All songs automatically available to all computers and iOS devices.

- Songs are now limited to 256kbps in iOS devices, you can no longer manually sync, you need to be in internet range to play a song the first time, not all songs sync.

It would be nice to have a solution where you can listen to any songs from any computer at any time without having to manually copy them to your computer or iPhone. Apple have solved this problem in the most remarkable way with ‘iTunes Match’. iTunes have 20 million songs ‘in the cloud’. That means out there on Apple servers. Rather than upload all your songs from your computer it simply looks at what songs you have, then let’s you access those songs (from the Apple server) from any of your iOS devices, anytime!

For example, I have the U2 song ‘One’ on my computer  which I imported into iTunes from a CD. When I sync to iTunes match,  Apple registers that I own this song. I can then listen to this song on my iPhone for free,  without my computer  even being on –  it streams the song from the Apple server.

Of course this uses Apple’s servers and Apple’s computing power so Apple charge a fee for this of  approximately $30  per year depending on where you live.

Here is how to register and setup iTunes match:

1. Click on iTunes match in your iTunes sidebar

2. Subscribe!

3. Wait while iTunes match syncs your files

In the setup process iTunes match takes 3 steps. First, iTunes will scan your entire iTunes library.  My library has approximately 3500 songs and this step took 6 minutes.

Secondly,  iTunes compares your songs to the songs in the iTunes library.  This step took about an hour  on my computer. All the songs that were on the Apple server are now available:

In the last step iTunes uploads all the songs from your computer to the iTunes cloud server that it cannot find on its cloud server. This last step took hours and hours.  There was approx 7 Gig of data in total uploaded!

Now you need to go to your iOS device and turn on iTunes Match. Go into ‘Settings’, ‘Music’ and turn on ‘iTunes Match’ to make the songs available to your iPod or iPhone.

Turning on iTunes match on an iPod

Now your songs are available on your iPhone - the cloud means they are on the cloud.

Now, there are a few limitations of iTunes match.

1. Songs are no longer lossless, even if they were lossless on your home computer. This is probably not a huge drawback as iOS devices don’t have the highest quality sound as it is.

2. The first time you play a song there is a 10-20 second delay while the song starts streaming, and if you skip forward on the song with the playback slider there is a delay while it starts streaming again.  Once you listen to a song it seems to stay on your iOS device and it plays straight away next time.

3. For some songs it says I need to be in wifi range and won’t play then over the phone network.

4. Not all songs are eligible for iCloud.  Of my 4912 items in iTunes, 1676 were not eligible for iCloud sync – a whole heap of talks I’ve collected plus my audio Bible.  The apple website says “You can match or upload music formats that can be played with iTunes. That includes AAC, MP3, WAV, AIFF, Apple Lossless, and more.” But the 1/3 of my iTunes that wouldn’t sync to iCloud were plain old  mp3 files that I can play in iTunes and on my iPhone. They sync with a manual sync, but not over iCloud.

In summary, iTunes match is a handy way to have most of your songs with you anywhere, but at the point of listening it’s not as convenient as having all the songs on your iOS device as you would from a manual sync.

This song for some reason needs wifi.

Nine Inch Nails – the band – have released some of their older songs in full garageband format. This includes all the individual vocal, guitar drum tracks etc. Now even if their music is not your style, it’s a great chance to have a play with some good quality recordings and have a practice at mixing them and so on.

Here’s the link – click on the garageband files.

http://www.ninremixes.com/multitracks.php

2. Press the Import Settings Button.

3. Select Apple Lossless Encoder. Also Select enable error correction when reading CD’s.

That’s it! When you import a CD it will import as lossless.

For me the number one criteria for buying an iPod is audio quality. Some people will go for looks, size, or battery life, but for me it’s simply a matter of which iPod sounds the best – not just through the headphones but also into my stereo.

This article discusses the reasons for the difference in quality of the sound output of the various models of iPods and iPhones, which iPod sounds the best, and why.

Firstly, The Results:

First place goes to the 5.5th Gen iPod.

(Be careful not to confuse this with the 6th generation ipod called Apple iPod ‘Classic’ which looks almost identical. The 6th Gen has the aluminium front.)

First place: the 5th Gen ipod family including ipod 5th gen and 5th gen enhanced with plastic front case. A1136

Second place goes to the good old 4th Generation iPod family including iPod photo, iPod colour and U2 edition iPod.

Second place: The 4th Gen ipod family including ipod photo, ipod color and ipod U2 edition. A1059 and A1099.

Third place for best audio quality – the first generation Nano!

Third place: the 1st generation nano! A1137

Which iPod sounds the best?

Last holidays I was driving along listening to U2 on my iPhone 3GS. I wanted to change to a different song that was on my nano and instantly I noticed the sound quality was much better than on the iPhone. I have since done some side-by-side tests using the same song on the iPhone 3GS and the iPod nano and the iPod Nano definitely has better quality audio. It clearly has a better bass response and is not so harsh in the high-end. So not all iPods are same, this got me wondering why.

There are two main things that contribute to the sound quality of an ipod. One is the audio chip that is used, the  other are the components along the audio path from the audio chip to the headphone jack – a mixture of op-amps, capacitors, resistors and inductors.

The iPods I like the best seem to be those that use the Audio chips from the Scottish company Wolfson.  When I detected this difference I didn’t not know what a Wolfson chip was, but I could hear a difference and so I did some research. It turns out my Nano and 4G iPod (which I like) both have a Wolfson – the iPhone 3Gs does not.  All listening tests are personal – some people like huge bass, some like a warmth. I like clarity. I like to feel like I am there. I am also sensitive to any slight increase in the midrange or treble that will make the music sound  harsh – especially over long periods, and I like to hear the very low bass, I’m not a bass head who want’s it loud, but I want it to be there.

the best iPods are those with a Wolfson audio chip

Which iPods have a wolfson audio chip?

iPod 1G & 2G (WM8721), 3G (WM8731),  4G(WM8975),  5G  (WM87588G) and 5.5G (WM87588G)

iPod nano 1G (WM8975G), 2G (WM8975), 3G (WM1870)

iPod Touch 1G (WM8758BG) 

iPod mini (Wolfson 8731?)

iPhone (WM8758BG) and the iPhone 3G (WM6180).

In summary, all the early iPods up to 5G Classic used Wolfson chips.

Which iPods have a Cirrus Audio Chip?

ipod ‘Classic’ 1G , 2G & 3G  (CS42L55) (These are also known as 6th 7th and 8th gen iPod)

ipod nano 4G (CS42L58), 5G (CLI1480A), 6G (CLI1544C0)

iPod Touch 2G (possibly CS42L58)

iPhone 3GS (CS41L61) and 4(338S0589), 4S (338S0987)

iPod Shuffle 4th Gen (CLI1544C0)

Cirrus iPod vs Wolfson

Some people claim the Cirrus Audio Chips are better, but that’s not what I hear. Here is a great article by  Marc Heijligers who also noticed a decrease in sound quality with the 6th Gen iPod, and he explains why.  He writes “I noticed that the 6G sounds precise, crisp, but lacks 3D image and has an electronic haze to the sound. At first, this might sound like an improvement (crisp, detailed), but when listening more carefully and for longer times, it becomes fatiguing after a while. The 5G sounds less precise, but its timbre contains more harmonic information and sounds less electronic. For me, the 5G is closer to how I experience acoustic music in real life, and for me is the better sounding device overall.” He then goes on to do some measurements to back up his findings.

Of all the iPods that use the wolfson chips, the 5th generation iPods appear to be the best, followed by the 4th Generation iPods. Check out these comments by Vinne from Red Wine Audio. Red Wine Audio offer mods of the 4th gen and 5th gen iPods where they will replace the output section of the iPod with high quality Black Gate NX-Hi-Q capacitors. According to onheadphones.com the output audio quality rivals that of $1500 CD-players, with improved bass response and clear high end.  (There is an excellent forum here on how to do the mod yourself!)

The sound quality of course depends on more than just the chip that is used, so it’s not just about which chip is in the iPod. My Shuffle model A1204 (non-wolfson) sounds great, as does the iPhone 4S.  It’s rumoured  that with the iPhone 5 Apple will be returning to the Wolfson chips, but we’ll see!

If you want the best possible audio quality, try and get hold of one of the fifth generation iPods – model number A1136.  This includes the iPod 5G, iPod U2 5G, iPod 5th Gen enhanced and iPod 5th Gen with video. They sound great!

The Best

iPod 5G (wolfson WM8758)
iPod 4G (wolfson WM8975)
iPod nano 1G and 2G (wolfson 8975), iPhone 4S, (wolfson WM8758).

UPDATE: This article was first written in 2010, Apple keeps improving with every iPod released, but I think these results still stand.   Check out this thread for some other raves about the 5.5G iPod.  There will always be new models coming out – keep an eye on head-fi forums and so on for reviews.  Here some people prefer 7th gen (thin 160G) Classic  to 5.5th Gen.

I have an phone 4S and even though it doesn’t have a Wolfson chip it sounds incredible.  This test shows iPhone 4S has better specs the  iPod Classic 6G and better than iPad 2, but I can’t’ find any direct comparison with the 5.5G iPod.

Some Measurements:

Conclusion:

If you want good audio in an iPhone the current iPhones (4, 4S) are the best.

If you are after good audio in an iPod the older ones are the best. (especially the 4th and 5.5th Gen classic era)

Wolfson chip in an iPhone

RECORDING ON AN IPHONE

On a final note, here’s some frequency response graphs (note these are of a complete loop – recording AND playback so they include the frequency rolloff of the microphone.)  Look at how bad the low frequency roll-off is on the iPhone 3Gs. It’s -3dB (half the output power) at 200Hz – no wonder it sounds so thin. The iPhone 4 response is a slight improvement over the 3GS. Flat is good – so the original iPhone wins! 3G bad at high frequencies, 3GS bad at low. So for listening the original iPhone and the 4S  are the best, but the original iPhone is much better for recording. The 3GS is terrible.

iPhone frequency response from faber acoustical 1st: iPhone Last:iPhone3GS

Now don’t get me wrong – the iPods and iPhones are still great music players.  Comparing the iPhone with other phones is like comparing apples with oranges. Even the 3GS – the worst iPhone –  leaves most other phones for dead in terms of music quality. But comparing apples with apples, first prize goes to the 5th Generation iPod, with the 4G iPod a close second.

Of course if you want better than ipod quality you might try  5G or 4G with the red wine mod.

Other notes: Cambridge Audio and Harman Kardon use Wolfson DAC chips in their CD players. Pioneer, NAD and Onkyo use wolfson in some of their CD players. Marantz use Cirrus Range. It’s not just about the chip – the other audio components will make a difference too.

http://www.lampizator.eu/lampizator/REFERENCES/Cambridge%20Azur/Cambridge%20Audio%20Azur%20640C%20ALmpizator.html

http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-100139.html

http://www.vasiltech.nm.ru/files/cd-players/CD-Player-DAC-Transport.htm

Importing songs into iTunes is easy – you just INSERT the CD, SELECT it in iTunes, and press the ‘Import’ button!

But… the default setting on iTunes is not the best setting to use when importing songs. It’s far better to use the ‘Apple Lossless’ setting which will keep your music at CD quality. If you must compress the music (e.g. you want to fit it on your iPod or a laptop) then use the  bitrate of 320kbps rather than the default 128kbps of iTunes.

This article describes how to import songs into iTunes with the better quality bitrate.

Introduction

If you go to the ‘iTunes:Preferences’ menu  and click on ‘Advanced’ then ‘Importing’ you will see some options like ‘Import Using’ and ‘Setting’.

This raises a few questions.

1. Why does Apple allow me to use different formats like AAC and MP3? Which one is better?

2. How good is the default setting of 128kbps (high quality)  (See picture below – click to enlarge).

Unfortunately I assumed the defaults were the best, so I used the built in defaults in iTunes to import my entire CD collection. But if you listen carefully to your iPod through your stereo, and compare it to a CD, you will hear a significant difference in audio quality at 128kbps.

It’s not that listening at 128kbps sounds really bad, but if you compare it to the original, you will notice that it’s different. It’s not as clear and some details are missing.

Best Bit-rate – 320kbps.

If you want better quality music you should use a higher bitrate than 128kbps. When Apple first launched iTunes the songs on the store were encoded at 128kbps, but from 2010 even Apple now use 256kbps on the iTunes store which is an immense improvement. The difference between Apple’s upgrade of 128kbps and 256kbps is very noticeable and it is worth upgrading all your existing iTunes purchases, but 256kbps is not as good as 320kbps and I recommend importing at  320kbps.

Better still: Apple Lossless

Also, since iTunes was released Hard Drives have increased by 10 times the storage capacity  so I would now recommend the Apple Lossless Encoder as the best way to import your CDs for general use. (I’ve written about it here.) It compresses an audio file without any deterioration in audio quality.

So why does iTunes allow lower settings? Well, a lower  setting will give a smaller file, so in the days of small iPods and small hard drives it was necessary to have very small music files. But  if you want good quality sound it’s better to go with a higher setting.

 The best of both worlds

If you do have one particular iPod or iPhone that is a bit small and you don’t want to fill it up with Apple lossless files,  there is a setting that you can set independently for each iPod that will reduce the file size just for that iPod.   You can change the settings for a particular iPod to put lower quality files on it to save space,  but  still have the Apple lossless files on your computer . Just tick the ‘Convert higher bit rate songs’ box. You can find it under the settings tab that appears when you plug the iPod in – it is the  bottom box in the picture below.  This  can be turned on or off  independently for each device that you have.

What are the differences in filesize?

A 3 minute song at 128kbps will use approx 3MB. (poor quality)

A 3 minute song at 320 kbps will use approx 7MB. (excellent quality)

A 3 minute song at Apple Lossless will use approx 15MB. (perfect quality)

Error Correction

There is an option that says ‘Use error correction when reading audio CDs’. You  should always have this option ticked. It will improve the quality  of the resulting audio.  The way information is written to an Audio CD is different to a CD-ROM, and so it is possible to read audio from a CD imperfectly.  This setting helps avoid mistakes when reading the audio from a CD.

LAME.

If you decide not to go with Apple lossless,  and you are after the best possible quality COMPRESSED file I suggest either use the built in AAC encoder at 320kbps, or you can use a little program called the ‘LAME encoder’ on the ‘insane’ setting which achieves a similar bitrate.

I have re-imported all my CD collection using the LAME encoder set to the insane setting. It sounds much better – I now cannot tell the difference between the compressed files and the originals. I am importing all my new CDs as Apple Lossless but personally I find the difference so small I’m not going to re-encode my old CDs to Lossless as LAME insane is pretty good.

What is LAME? 

Lame is an mp3 encoder that is open source, which means rather than being developed commercially, it was developed by unpaid programmers. It was originally not as good as the commercial mp3 algorithm, but as many people worked on LAME, it actually overtook the original mp3 encoder and is now better!

There are literally hundreds of possible settings to use with LAME. It can be optimised for speech, music and so on. There are some preset settings, called standard (as good as the itunes defaults) extreme (better that itunes default) and insane (the best possible quality).

OPTION 1: How to import a song at high quality into iTunes using just iTunes.

1. Open iTunes, on the iTunes menu select Preferences. Then on the general tab select Import Settings.

2. On the settings window select ‘AAC Encoder’ and ‘Custom’ as follows:

3. Select 320kbps. Sample rate can be auto or 44.1 VBR doesn’t matter really. The file may be smaller if you use VBR.

Click OK and import a CD as usual.

These shots were taken in 2008, I now suggest you use Apple Lossless Encoder instead of AAC. It gives even better quality and Hard Drives are now large enough to cope with the size of Apple Lossless files.

OPTION 2: How to import a song into iTunes using  the 3rd party LAME encoder.

STEP 1. Download the itunes LAME Encoder.

Download the itunes-LAME Encoder from here (click on itunes LAME importer – download) and unzip it.

Download the Import with LAME script from here and unzip it.

Download the little iTunes LAME installer folder here and unzip it. This is a magic  folder and anything dragged onto it will automatically be installed into the itunes script library.

You should have three files looking like this:

STEP 2. Install the itunes LAME Encoder.

Drag the itunes-LAME icon (left fiel above) onto the |||Drag here to install||| icon.

Drag the iTunes-LAME script icon onto the |||Drag here to install||| icon.

In itunes there should me a new menu item between window and help.

Step 3. Import a CD.

Open itunes and insert a CD into your computer. Make sure the CD is selected in itunes.

Select the new itunes menu item Import with LAME…

A new iTunes-LAME window will appear that looks like this:

In the window type in –alt-preset insane as you can see above. Select prefs and select ‘cache tracks to hard drive’ also in prefs make sure destination is set to iTunes Music Library.
Click import, you will have a great quality CD in itunes, in a playlist called imported from LAME. You can delete this playlist, it is only so that you can see what you just imported.

If you are low on space pick out some of your least favourite CD’s and encode them at a lower quality!

These are the settings I use for good quality speech in itunes:

Stereo Bit rate: 80kbbps

Sample rate: 22.050kHz

Channels: Mono

NOTE: This results in a 40kbps file (the mono file ends up at half the stereo bitrate)
A 20 minute talk will be about 6Mb and sound good.

If I am ripping from CD for speech for my ipod, say a story, and size is not so important, I set itunes to:

96kbps,
44.1kHz,
mono.

Which gives an output of 48kbps.The place you put these preferences in is itunes:preferences and click on the advanced icon then importing tab then Setting:Custom you can set the various options according to what you want.

Click here to read how to make the filesize (and quality) lower using LAME.

1. SMALLEST FILE SIZE ACCEPTABLE QUALITY.
For very small file size (4MB for 20 minutes) and acceptable quality,
use the LAME encoder (the the separate article on Itunes songs to find out about the LAME encoder) with the following arguments in the ‘Encoding options’ Box:

-V 9 –vbr-new -mm -h -q 0

2. An even better option than above but slightly more complicated is:
Firstly convert the file to 22khz sample rate and mono, (eg in Audacity)
then use the following LAME settings:

-V 8 –vbr-new -h -q 0

3. BETTER QUALITY AND ACCEPTABLE FILE SIZE.
For about twice the size files (8MB for 20 minutes of speech) but very very good quality try this in LAME encoder:

–preset voice

OR

-V 8 –vbr-new -h -q 0

4. BEST QUALITY. Use itunes. Although LAME is better for music, and lower bitrate spoken word, itunes is great for 40kbps spoken word and above. CLick here to read about the best settings on importing spoken word into itunes here.

Just found this software.

The Amazing Slow Downer

It’s great. It allows you to slow down music, keeping the pitch the same. There’s lots of software that will do this but this is well implemented with lots of nice features, and a good algorithm that sounds good even with big slow downs.

1. Record the speech using audacity. (Don’t use an mp3 player unless it records in aiff or you will lose quality when you re-compress to a lower bitrate mp3)
2. In Audacity, edit the bits out that you don’t want (like blank bits at the start or end of the recording)
3. In Audacity, I like to add some compression (this makes the louder sections quieter and the quieter sections louder to make the listening level more constant within the track and also normalise (this amplifies the whole track to the loudest it can be without being so loud it distorts. You should compress first (as this reduces the highest levels, then normalise. The following settings are a good start:
   Compression
   threshold -12dB
   ratio 2:1
   attack 0.2 secsNormalisation
   Normalise using default. (centre on 0 and normalise to -3db)
4. Next you need to edit the ID tags, which contain the information that is displayed in itunes. For our sermons at Church we do it like this:
   Song title = passage, (“1 Thess 1″)
   Artisit = preacher, (“Bryson Smith”)
   album = DPC (“DPC”)
   genre = speech
5. Finally, export. Firstly I would save as an Audacity file to keep, or as an AIFF, so you have a full quality version on hand, then export to mp3 for the internet.
   It’s a toss up between file size and quality. Anything below 40kbps, you start to notice ‘ringing’ (called aliasing) around the high frequencies. We used to record our sermons at 32kbps, but this has enough compression noise to be annoying. 40kbps is tolerable, just noticeable. You don’t need stereo for speech, so mono is fine. If you set itunes to 80kbps, mono, it will output a 40kbs file. I like to export from audacity to aiff, then compress with the itunes encoder. I don’t remember why I do this, perhaps the audacity mp3 encoder is lower quality at lower bitrates than the itunes one.

That’s it! Check the quality, upload it to your webpage, or download to your mp3. If you are just taking a file from the web, and just want to make it smaller for you ipod, you can skip all the audacity bits and just encode it with itunes at the lower bitrate.