How can I have Apple Lossless in iTunes, Apple Lossy in iPod

[hugh]

My situation:

I have all my CDs ripped to WMA lossless format. This year I got an iPod Touch and Apple TV so now I am using iTunes. The result is I am now in the process of ripping all the CD's again to Apple Lossless.

I prefer lossless because I am playing these songs over my stereo and want the best possible sound.

So my question is:

How can I create a library of Lossy versions for transfer to my iPod touch or can I somehow have a lossy version automatically created when I transfer songs to my touch?

[hugh]

Okay so from my research it seems I am out of luck. It sounds like I will essentially have to take every song in the library and then re encode in say AAC 128k or 256k by doing the following:

• Goto edit preferences.
• Click on the General Tab
• Click on the import settings
• Set the import dropdown to AAC encoder and the preferred bitrate
• Highlight all my Lossless song in itunes and righmouse click
• Click on Create _________ Version where ________ is the bitrate I set in the encoder.

The result would be duplicates of every song: one in lossless and one in lossy format.

This seems really ridiculous because now it screws up my library and presumably would screw up genius.

Help!

[QuickSilver]

Would having 2 libraries be a problem? I have 4 personally.

[hugh]

With multiple libraries, I guess I would put all my lossless music in one library and lossy music in another. I guess I would stuff all the podcasts and applications in the lossy library because they are for use on the iPod

But what about Video. I want my video available to Apple TV, iPod and iTunes so I would want it available to both libraries.

The other thing is when I rip a new CD, wouldn't I have to rip it into each library? I want to rip a bunch of CD's into lossless and then mass convert them to lossy using the right mouse button.

[QuickSilver]

Well for the ATV it can only sync to 1 library but can stream from up to 5(?) I think.

I do not know a way for you to rip a cd to 2 formats and then have them show up in each library. When i read your 1st post I thought you were going to re-rip all your cd's to Apple Lossless?

I assumed you just wanted that 1 library for transferring to your touch the lossless rips.

[hugh]

I am ripping all my cds to lossless which I will then convert to lossy in the one library. In future though (when I had 2 libraries) I would have to rip once in each library - correct?

I assumed you just wanted that 1 library for transferring to your touch the lossless rips.

As I noted, if it was only music then okay but the podcasts and and video need to be in both which makes in all very complicated.

Ideally, Apple iTunes would be much better if it could create one instance of a song in the library but multiple files suporting it (lossless and lossy). Then you could just say which version to use when. lossless in itunes and lossy when moving to a disc.

I understand the shuffle used to have software that would convert lossless to lossy. I think this should be an option for all iPods then you wouldn't need to worry.