Posted by NRen2k5 on 07/06/07 10:55

The Mac Dude wrote:
> In article <1183649210.441651.55920@j4g2000prf.googlegroups.com>, El
> Cazador <vrstull@aol.com> wrote:
>
>> Relatively new to Mac. One things that confuses my
>> too-lazy-or-it's- too-complicated-to-learn brain is how to import
>> and burn mp3? If a CD is inserted it automatically goes to iTunes.
>> I don't even know what format is copies in! So, how does one go
>> about setting up another folder to store mp3's?? I have Toast &
>> Jam but have yet to try to use it as I did with my P.C. Thanks for
>> any help. Speak slow and use little words if you CAN help. Thanks
>> a again.
>
> I am not the most expert, but here are some hints.
>
> On a CD, the sound is in an uncompressed format which is called (I
> believe) AIFF. In iTunes, you can set what format to import the CD
> into (Preferences:Importing on my old iTunes V4). Shove the CD in &
> let iTunes import. It will create files in the selected format. If
> you want to burn yourself an MP3 CD from several normal CDs you'd
> import as MP3 and then burn the playlist. I think in that way you can
> get about 6 albums onto one CD. You do not need any extra burning
> software like Toast; OS X has the burning built-in & you can burn
> directly from iTunes. To listen to the CD made thus you do need a CD
> player that can play MP3 CDs, not all do that (at least not a few
> years back, I haven't checked recently).
>
> Importing an MP3 source (CD or other) is similar. You may have to
> explicitly select Import from the file menu, though. Note that
> commercial music CDs are never MP3 encoded, AFAIK.
>
> As far as storing MP3s, iTunes does that for you upon importing & you
> probably want to just let it do its thing. Again, if you select MP3
> as the importing option that's what it will create. If you use an
> iPod, select AAC as the format, it is claimed to be somewhat better
> quality for the same file size & bit rate (I personally cannot
> comment on this), but not many other players can play AAC files so
> MP3 is more universal. If you need files accessible in a folder, just
> drag them out of the iTunes window into the folder which will make a
> duplicate (in the same format as iTunes has it stored). There is also
> a dedicated "Convert to MP3" menu item which will convert non-MP3
> songs. I don't like it as in my case the result ends up in the
> library under the same name as the original & I have to hunt the MP3
> files thus created down.
>
> These comments apply to the Mac version of iTunes, I don't know how
> similar the Windows version is. Also , I am using an old version (4).
>
I couldn’t have said it better myself. No, really. As experienced as I
am with CDs and MP3s, I’ve never touched a Mac.

Just one thing. You’re mistaken about CD-audio being in AIFF format.
They are in an interleaved PCM format. AIFF is the container used on Mac
systems to store a PCM stream as a sound file.

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