Does Apple Lossless + iTunes + Windows = Perfect

Additonally, (4) is iTunes the only way to get music on an iPod that will retain song informatin (ie. cover art, titlte, etc)? (5) This one is non-audio but video related. I have Mpegs/Divx videos that I have downloaded from the internet over the years (old saturday night live skits, funny commercials, etc.). Would I be able to watch those on the latest iPod video? Would there be some conversion that is required?

Thanks again!

Why not just play the lossless songs from the iPod directly into your stereo? No Kmixer!

A helpful tutorial can be found here: http://www.music-reviewed.com/guides.php

Here's my understanding to help get you started:

If you're going to burn CDs onto your hard drive and you're using a PC the best software is EAC (exact audio copy) and it's free. The Kmixer in windows has nothing to do with burning your CD, only with playing it back. So if you burn your cds uncompressed with EAC (and you burn using 'test and copy') you're fine...you will have secured the music on your computer in the best way possible and don't have to worry about needing to redo it. the files on your hard drive will be exact copies of the tracks on the cd. A tutorial can be found here: http://www.music-reviewed.com/guides.php?page=audio_cdr&PHPSESSID=9efa04612a928b00985b57186e1df2f8

Playing the CDs with a PC: Apparently the way to get around listening through the Kmixer is to download an ASIO driver. It's free. Go to Empirical Audio for info on how to install this and info on all aspects of hard drive audio here: http://www.empiricalaudio.com/ (find the link for computer audio)

Playing the CDs using itunes and or foobar (among others.) Steve at empirical audio (see above link) explains his preferences using these programs. Apparently if you're using a PC, foobar is the way to go for the best sound but i think the difference might be very slight so if using foobar (free on the internet) is a problem for you, just go with itunes. You can always change later and music on your hard drive is never affected.

Ipod. Once you have your music uncompressed on your hard drive you'll probably want to convert it to to lossless for your ipod to save space. in itunes you just drag the music files into the open itunes window and it will do this automatically i think. you might need to alter your settings in the program. the music on your hard drive is uneffected. from itunes you then just drag the music you want onto your ipod.

Im not an expert so use the links above to make sure i'm not giving you incorrect info. the bottom line is that you just want to make sure to burn your music properly the first time and fortunately that's the easiest part. playing back can get more difficult if you're concerned about getting the best performance with a PC but even if you miss a step, it's only a matter of changing settings later when you become more familiar with the process.

I don't know why the empirical audio links didn't work in my above post, but the link is: http://www.empiricalaudio.com/

Word of warning.

Here's something I'm currently trying to figure out. First of all, when you burn a cd using EAC, make sure to first select 'get information from' under the database tab so the song tracks and artist are listed. itunes seems to do this automatically. If you burn in EAC without doing this, the only remedy i know of is to manually type the information in or burn the cd over again. Maybe there's another way?

When I do burn cds in EAC (making sure I had EAC look up the info for track listing, etc first) and drag the folder into itunes, itunes doesn't recognize the artist so the tracks aren't put in alphabetical order by artist. I must be doing something wrong, but what? Any help?

Also, when I do burn using itunes (as opposed to EAC) if it's a store bought compilation cd, the songs get scattered and are listed alphabetically by artist so it's impossible to play the album as a whole. Any help here?

Kublakhan,

Thank you for taking the time to lay out this information so eloquently. I appreciate it big time! Those links are very informative.

Just to recap, I'll have to have uncompressed EAC files and the same files in Apple Lossless on the external hardrive. Then, I can put them into the iPod whichever way I like... Being that I'm going to use the iPod I believe that I have to move the files into it via iTunes, right? If so, I'd probably just stick with that rather than Foobar. Additionally, I think that I would have to use SlimServer with the SqueezeBox anyway.

Any progress in getting your questions resolved? I wish that I could help.

Thanks again.