Size of imported files to ipod

Myksyk

Hi ... apologies in advance as I'm sure this has been asked many times but couldn't find it in FAQs. I've just bought a new 8gb nano and have been busily importing and syncing my cd collection. However, some of the tracks are importing at 50, 60 or even 70mbs per song while most are somewhere between 3 and 5 mbs. My questions therefore are:

What size do files need to be on average to get a good quality ipod playback?
What can I do to manage the size of the files I rip?
Can I resize the ones I've already ripped?

Myksyk

ok got this at itunes:

You can choose the encoding format (MP3, AIFF, or WAV) and other import options that iTunes uses to import songs. Your choices affect the audio quality and size of the song file. MP3 format is a high-quality, Internet-standard encoding method that's best for most uses. AIFF and WAV formats are not compressed and require large amounts of disk space (about 650 MB per CD or 9 MB per minute of music). If you plan to make the highest quality CDs at the expense of using a lot of disk space, choose AIFF. The WAV encoder is primarily for use with Windows computers or computers that do not have MP3 software.

Choose Preferences from the iTunes application menu, then click the Importing tab and choose an encoder (MP3, AIFF, or WAV). If you choose MP3, you can also set configuration options for the encoding. If you plan to create your own audio CDs, or listen to your music with high-quality stereo speakers, choose the High Quality setting. If you listen with headphones or play music in a noisy environment, choose the Better setting. For portable MP3 players with limited storage capacity, use the Good setting to fit more songs on the device. The Good setting creates songs that are about 1 MB in size per minute of music. To customize your import options, choose Custom from the Configuration pop-up menu in the Importing pane.

So that answers the first two ... any help on the last?
Or indeed any comments on the above are welcome.

Makaveli

Any tracks that are over 30MB (unless it's like a 17 minute track) were ripped as WAV and are uncompressed. They are basically cd quality. However as you can see the trade off for this quality is the massive file size.

Quality of rip is quite subjective. Some people would be happy with a 128Kbps Mp3 where as others (myself included) will settle for nothing less than 192Kbps as a minimum. Personally I find VBR (variable bit rate) is a lot better than CBR because there is no need to encode silence at 192Kbps taking up more space.

If you check the FAQ, I posted a guide for setting up EAC to rip your cds. It's easy to follow and will give you good quality rips. With an 8GB Nano I'd go for V2 rips (which are VBR and use less space than 192 CBR). I rip using V0 but my DAP has a 40GB HDD so it's not an issue for me.

dbpoweramp, also linked to in the FAQ, can transcode your wav files to mp3. This is perfectly fine because it's a lossless to lossy transcode so bar the compression from this transcode no additional quality will be lost. Lossy to lossy transcodes are a bad idea.

So my recommendations.

Quality - mp3s at V2 setting.
Download and configure EAC, then use it to rip any cds you want.
Download dbpoweramp and use it to transcode your wav files to your desired format.

Myksyk

Cheers ... thanks Makaveli. My iPOD education continues apace!