Some older music players do not sync with itunes but require you to manually copy an mp3 file onto them. Here is how to convert a song that you have in iTunes into an MP3 file so you can copy it to your mp3 player.

1. Go to the iTunes  menu and select preferences,  go to the tab called General  and click the button called Import Settings
2. Select mp3 encoder,  and choose a bit rate. (128kbps is the minimum for reasonable audio, above 192 the average listener won’t tell the difference, 320kbps is insanely good)
   

   choose the mp3 encoder

3. Now go back to your iTunes music list, right click on any song, and there will be an option called ‘Create mp3 Version’. Click this and it will create an MP3 version of the song and add it to your library.
   

   Create mp3 Version option appears

4. Now you need to find the mp3 file that was just made!  Go back into your iTunes library and sort by date added.  The new MP3 file will be at the top of the list!  right click on this song and drag it to your desktop and the MP3 file will now be on your desktop.
   

   Sort by date added to find the new mp3 file

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.