Save Disk Space on your iPhone / iPod by Converting Song Bit Rate to 128kbps

If you don’t mind the degradation that come with reducing an audio files bit rate, you can potentially save quite a bit of disk space on an iPhone/iPod/iPad by selecting an option the next time you sync the device in iTunes. Here’s what you’re looking to do:

• In the Summary tab just look near the bottom of iTunes to see: “Convert higher bit rate songs to 128kbps AAC”
• Select the checkbox
• The next time you sync your iPhone/iPod, the songs that are rated higher than 128kbps will be converted down

Depending on the quality of the speakers, many people can’t tell the difference with 128kbps audio vs higher bit rates. If you have a great car stereo or a good iPhone speaker dock, don’t be surprised if you can hear some very slight noise. The best way I can describe the difference in sound quality is that the songs play less crisp, but it’s pretty hard to notice on earbuds, cheaper headphones, and most stereo systems.

The amount of space you will save obviously depends on how much music you have and the audio files original bit rate. If you have a large library of high quality songs, it wouldn’t be unusual to save over 1GB of disk space if not more just by reducing the bit rate.