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Import settings and hard disk space |
When you import a song into the library, the song is encoded and stored on your hard disk. The amount of space the file takes up depends on the song and the import settings that are chosen in iTunes Preferences. The default encoding option is MP3, which is a compressed file format.
The import settings also affect the audio quality of the imported song. Larger files take up more hard disk space, but sound better. If you're transferring files to a portable MP3 player, you might want to choose the Good MP3 import preference so you can fit more songs on the player. As a rule of thumb, the Good setting creates files that are 1 MB in size for each minute of music.
The WAV and AIFF encoders do not compress the songs. They make files that are several times larger than MP3 files and take up a large amount of hard disk space. However, if you plan to burn high-quality audio CDs with the songs you're importing, you should use AIFF encoding for the best results.
For more information about importing options, click "Tell me more."