At the moment I have two boxes of cd's and I intend to digitize them and place them on a large external HDD and have iTunes read from that hard-drive. Is this basically the simple way to do it?
is there another option?
My needs:
I just want to have all my music on an external drive of some type and be able to sync music to my ipod when needed. I figured just picking up a a large external HDD was the best bet.
Am i doing it all wrong?
There are other options, but they may not apply to you.
Most CDs have a couple of songs you like and a bunch you don't like. You might find it preferable to buy the 2 songs per CD you like for 89 cents apiece online, rather than taking the time to rip the songs from a CD.
High quality mp3s (192 kb bitrate) take up about 1 GB for each 250 songs. So you don't need much space. A 100 GB drive would hold about 25,000 songs.
Depending on the size of that box you have, you may not need to buy another drive. The internal will work fine. But back the stuff up, like any other data.
If you use mp3s, use a high bit rate, use variable bit rate (VBR), and use joint stereo. Those things help you maintain high quality sound with little wasted space.
There are other good players besides I-Tunes, but I'm not sure how well they work for synching an i-Pod.
Read up on "tags".
Normally, you would rip the songs from the CD in WAV format and then convert the WAV files to mp3 if necessary, but most rippers will let you rip directly to mp3 if you want mp3s.
WAV files take up about 10 times as much space---2500 songs per 100 GB, rather than 25,000.
Get a good ripping application. CDex works very well.
If you use mp3s, try to use the "LAME" encoder. It is very well known, high quality, and often included with ripping applications.