Classical Music on an iPod - 3

Setting Preferences

Click on the “Edit” menu and choose “Preferences”.

Click on the “General” icon near the top of the Preferences window. To the right of the text “When you insert a CD”, select “Show CD”. Then click on the “Import Settings” button and select the file format for the music files you import from a CD. (Wav, AIFF and Apple Lossless all retain the full audio quality of the CD. The MP3 and AAC formats require much less disk space at the expense of audio quality.) For the case where you are copying music files from many CDs to an iPod and do not expect to play music from iTunes itself, choose AAC and then the iTunes Plus setting. Checking the “Use error correction...” box may allow iTunes to identify and work around some errors at the expense of extra time for the importing process. Click on the “OK” button to finish with this dialog.

You should be back to the Preferences window (labeled “General”). Click on the “Advanced” icon and note the location of the media folder. This will help you find music files in Windows explorer. If you check “Keep iTunes Media Folder organized”, iTunes will store music files according to the rules described here. If this option is not checked, iTunes will still store music files from imported CDs, according to similar rules.

Now you need to insert a music CD and make a few more settings.

Insert a CD. Itunes may display a message asking if you want to import the CD. Check the “Do not ask again” box and then click on the “No” button. (You need to do a few things before importing the CD.)

You should see a list of tracks on the CD with values filled in for some tags. (If your computer isn't connected to the internet, iTunes can't look up these tag values and the list will be blank.)

Right-click in the column headings area and be sure that the following tags are checked: Composer, Album, Artist, Genre and Name. You can rearrange the columns as discussed above for the music library view.

The iTunes window should look like this image. (screen 3).

Larger image here.

The tag values are specific to the CD you inserted.