Burning CDs onto old G4 iBook and transfering to 2017 iMac iTunes Library?

[slope]

I've got loadsa CDs and the only CD reader I have is an old 2004? G4 iBook.

What's the best/simplest way of transferring my CD collection into iTunes on a 2017 iMac? In as good a quality as possible.

Ideally I'd like to be able to import them into artist albums rather than 'playlists' - which I don't understand 

Apologies if this seems like a dumb question

But I is struggling on this particularly slippery slope 

[Jurek]

I would've thought something along the lines of download the CDs onto the iTunes on your 2004 iBook.
Then go into the iTunes library and copy it's contents onto a stick (or several sticks)
Put the stick(s) into your 2017 iMac and paste the contents of the stick into the iTunes library on that machine.
Or something....

[PaulF]

Rather than ripping a large CD collection, I’d go to a file sharing site and download from there.

I appreciate that’s a grey area in terms of copyright; my view is that I’ve already bought it so it’s OK but your view may differ.

Alternatively I’d buy a cheap external CD drive and plug that into the 2017 machine.

[grams]

First, check the drive is actually working. Old drives often die if they haven’t been used in a long time.

Then, go into iTunes preferences and set it to automatically rip every CD that’s inserted, and eject CDs when it’s done. Then you can mindlessly feed your CDs in while you’re doing something else.

If your machine has an internet connection, it should automatically identify every CD and tag them as albums.

Then in the Music folder in Finder you’ll find all the ripped files ready to be copied to your other machine. The album titles etc will copy across with the files.

[Jaded]

If you the. above ^ you'll fine the songs grouped into folders of albums, then into folders of artists, in the Music folder.

[slope]

Many many thanks again for the uber brill YACF helpline gang/knowledge 

Fortunately, the 2004 iBook's CD/DVD hardware is still functional - it did need a bit of a delve with an optical cloth thing wrapped around a credit card, inserting motion, before it realised I was serious

But what a palaver to copy/load all me CDs into the ancient iBook (and therefore ancient iTunes) and transfer that audio data to the what must be old now - the 2017 iMac!

Trouble is I still cry and get very emotional about music - even if the ears miss some of the dynamics 

Thanks again for all your your positive help 

[PaulF]

Are the 2 computers on the same network? If so, with patience, you can copy the files from one to the other once you’ve ripped them onto the first machine.

[Jurek]

Many many thanks again for the uber brill YACF helpline gang/knowledge 

Fortunately, the 2004 iBook's CD/DVD hardware is still functional - it did need a bit of a delve with an optical cloth thing wrapped around a credit card, inserting motion, before it realised I was serious

But what a palaver to copy/load all me CDs into the ancient iBook (and therefore ancient iTunes) and transfer that audio data to the what must be old now - the 2017 iMac!

Trouble is I still cry and get very emotional about music - even if the ears miss some of the dynamics 

Thanks again for all your your positive help 

I'll be interested to know how you sort this out.

[Kim]

Hang onna minute.  Don't macs do something that turns them into a removable drive if you boot them up with the right incantation?  Would that include the optical drive?

ETA: "Target disk mode" and this looks promising: https://www.macworld.com/article/1057005/tdmoptical.html

[Jaded]

Erm, thinking about this, whilst Target Disk Mode is a good one, if the two Macs are on the same network you can use Remote Disk.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/04/14/how-to-use-another-computers-dvd-drive-across-a-network-with-macos-remote-sharing

What you may find is you are not able to do the Encode Disk / Eject Disk thing you can do if iTunes is  running in the machine with the DVD drive.

[slope]

So, my tedious solution is to connect the old iBook and modern iMac wirelessly via Finder - Go - Connect to Server. They are then both controllable from each other.

Import a CD into iBook iTunes.

Then on iMac iTunes go to File - Add to library. The navigate to the iBook's Home folder User - Music - iTunes and select the album that was the CD.

That then imports to iMac iTunes (annoyingly without any apparent progress bar  )

As the iBook is also connected to the internet, it access and applies artist, album title and track information.

Only problem so far is not all the CDs come out at the same volume somewhere along the line

Good thoughto discover some music I'd completely forgotten about 

[Kim]

Only problem so far is not all the CDs come out at the same volume somewhere along the line

That's not a problem with your workflow, but rather a trend in the way CDs have been mastered over the years.  Over the course of the 1990s^[1] someone (who probably listened to music in a car^[2]) decided that dynamic range was an outmoded concept, and they started compressing the crap out of music so that it would sound louder, like when radio stations turned the Optimod up to 11.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

Some CD ripping or audio file management tools have a 'normalise' setting, where they'll jibble about with the audio to make the peak (or average) loudness of a collection match.



_{[1] I don't think this was so much a cultural phenomenon (the loudness war is far older than that), so much as the point where technology became cheap enough that people were allowed access to digital signal processors without adult supervision.
[2] To be fair, listening in noisy environments is a reasonable use for dynamic range compression.  It's just that the world would be a (musically) better place if this was applied selectively on playback, rather than in the studio.}

[grams]

iTunes has a feature you can turn on called Sound Check which is meant to keep volume more consistent between different tracks.

[Kim]

iTunes has a feature you can turn on called Sound Check which is meant to keep volume more consistent between different tracks.

This is, I think, how we win the loudness war.  No point in compressing the crap out of a track if it's only going to get splatted by iTunes.

[ian]

On the few occasions I've needed an optical drive, I've used the remote disk feature to mount the one in old 2009 Mac Mini under the stairs on the iMac in my remote command centre.

The import progress bar is at the top (where the track displays).

iTunes does, as an alternative to soundcheck let you set the average volume of individual albums and tracks. It won't fix the loudness issue but it will avoid that thing with playlists where suddenly it's LOUD. To be honest, everything recorded after 1990 is compressed to the max anyway and before that is the era of shonky granddad music that you're better off not hearing.

[Gattopardo]

Does itunes record in flac or vog orbis?

[frankly frankie]

Some CD ripping or audio file management tools have a 'normalise' setting, where they'll jibble about with the audio to make the peak (or average) loudness of a collection match.

Just the tagging hopefully - rather than the actual audio.

On the few occasions I've needed an optical drive, I've used the remote disk feature to mount the one in old 2009 Mac Mini under the stairs on the iMac in my remote command centre.

The thing is though, that you do need to access the drive physically - no use having it walled up like a cask of Amontillado.

[ian]

Does itunes record in flac or vog orbis?

No. It won't play them either (Apple have their own lossless format, ALAC – you can convert between the two).

The volume adjustment and sound check in iTunes are just metadata.