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To change your encoder and quality settings and other importing preferences before ripping an audio CD or converting a file in iTunes, follow these steps:
1. Choose iTunes --> Preferences (Mac), or Edit --> Preferences (Windows), click the Advanced tab, and then click the Importing tab.
The Importing preferences appear, allowing you to make changes to the encoding format and its settings.
2. Choose the encoding format that you want to convert the song into and select the settings for that format.
The Setting pop-up menu offers different settings depending on your choice of encoder in the Import Using pop-up menu.
3. Click OK to accept changes.
 | The AAC, MP3, AIFF, and WAV encoders let you customize the settings for the encoders. The Apple Lossless encoder is automatic and offers no custom settings to change. |
Try using the AAC encoder for everything except music that you intend to burn on an audio CD or an MP3 CD; AAC offers the best trade-off of space and quality for hard drives and iPods.
The Setting pop-up menu for the AAC encoder offers three choices: High Quality, Spoken Podcast, and Custom.
- The Spoken Podcast setting is useful for converting podcasts exported from GarageBand or a similar audio-editing application into iTunes.
- Use the High Quality setting for most music you rip from CDs, but for very intense music (such as complex jazz or classical music, recordings with lots of instruments, or your most favorite songs), you might want to fine-tune the settings.
- To customize your AAC encoder settings, select the Custom option from the Setting pop-up menu to see the AAC Encoder dialog.
The custom settings for AAC enable you to change the following:
- Stereo Bit Rate: This pop-up menu allows you to select the bit rate, which is measured in kilobits per second (Kbps). Use a higher bit rate for higher quality, which also increases the file size. The highest-quality setting for this format is 320 Kbps; 128 is considered high quality.
- Sample Rate: This pop-up menu enables you to select the sample rate, which is the number of times per second the sound waveform is captured digitally (or sampled). Higher sample rates yield higher-quality sound and larger file sizes. However, never use a higher sample rate than the rate used for the source. CDs use a 44.1 kHz rate.
- Use Variable Bit Rate Encoding (VBR): This option helps keep file size down, but quality might be affected. VBR varies the number of bits used to store the music depending on the complexity of the sound. If you select the Highest setting from the Quality pop-up menu for VBR, iTunes encodes up to the maximum bit rate of 320 Kbps in sections of songs where the sound is complex enough to require a high bit rate. Meanwhile, iTunes keeps the rest of the song at a lower bit rate to save file space. The lower limit is set by the rate that you select in the Stereo Bit Rate pop-up menu.
- Channels: This pop-up menu enables you to choose how you want the music to play through speakers — in stereo or mono. Stereo offers two channels of music for left and right speakers, and mono offers only one channel but takes up half the space of stereo recordings when digitized. If the recording is in stereo, don't choose mono; you lose part of the sound. (You might lose vocals or guitar riffs, depending on the recording.) Select the Auto setting to have iTunes use the appropriate setting for the music.
- Optimize for Voice: This option filters the sound to favor the human voice. Podcasters can use this option, along with the AAC encoder, to convert audio recordings into a podcast format optimal for iTunes.
Select the highest bit rate in the Stereo Bit Rate pop-up menu and leave the other two pop-up menus set to Auto.
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