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Topic: Looking for metadata for wav files, Any ideas for tagging software?  (Read 9563 times) previous topic - next topic
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Looking for metadata for wav files, Any ideas for tagging software?

I have all of my music stored as wav files.  With hard drive space so cheap, this is the way to go for me.  With thousands of CD's already ripped to my hard drive, I would like to automatically look up the metadata for these files on Freedb or some other similar database.  Is there a way to do this?  Jaikoz does this for compressed formats and FLAC, but it does not support wav files for some reason (why not?).  I cannot find a plug-in for foobar to do this either.

Window Media Player does look up the metadata, unlike foobar, so I might have to continue to use that.  WMP is not ideal for other reasons, so I am looking for a solution that would allow me to use Foobar but easily access the metadata.  Any ideas?

Looking for metadata for wav files, Any ideas for tagging software?

Reply #1 –
Quote from: tefleming on
Jaikoz does this for compressed formats and FLAC, but it does not support wav files for some reason (why not?).  I cannot find a plug-in for foobar to do this either.

I don't know that prog but the reason is probably because wav is not designed to store metadata. For foobar you can use the freedb plugin which is included in the installer but not installed by default, or the discogs plugin. None of them will work for wav files though because there's no way to store the metadata in a wav file. So you might consider using a lossless codec which supports metadata (flac, wavpack).

Looking for metadata for wav files, Any ideas for tagging software?

Reply #2 –
Thanks for the reply.  It's unfortunate that metadata cannot be stored within a wav file.  Windows Media Player 11 stores it in a separate file.  Rather than convert to FLAC, I'm going to use wav files and WMP as my player.  Using the software MetaDataBackup by Dale Preston (freeware) helps to ensure that the Metadata can be restored if corrupted (which happens) and also allows me to transfer the metadata from one computer to another.  This last point is quite important because the metadata is most easily obtained at the time the CD is ripped.

Looking for metadata for wav files, Any ideas for tagging software?

Reply #3 –
Quote
Thanks for the reply. It's unfortunate that metadata cannot be stored within a wav file. Windows Media Player 11 stores it in a separate file.

You can use CUE files to store some metadata within them.

Looking for metadata for wav files, Any ideas for tagging software?

Reply #4 –
Some metadata can be stored inside the wave file itself as well.

The idea that absolutely no tag information can be stored in wave files is patently false.

Looking for metadata for wav files, Any ideas for tagging software?

Reply #5 –
Quote from: greynol on
The idea that absolutely no tag information can be stored in wave files is patently false.


Sure, but the key point is there's no standard for storing the sorts of metadata you'd expect like in an id3 or ape tag. You could just make up whatever kind of new RIFF chunks you want for storing data but there's no application out there that's going to interpret them properly.

Looking for metadata for wav files, Any ideas for tagging software?

Reply #6 –
I see that you worded your response carefully enough not to say there are no applications that are capable of reading tag information from wave files.  This is good, because there are.

Looking for metadata for wav files, Any ideas for tagging software?

Reply #7 –
There's not much point in storing archived audio as WAV except if you're going to edit it.

Looking for metadata for wav files, Any ideas for tagging software?

Reply #8 –
You can edit flac and wavpack too (i do it sometimes with nero wave editor and the plugins).

Looking for metadata for wav files, Any ideas for tagging software?

Reply #9 –
Don't forget to mention that FLAC has a high error tolerance (Fehlertoleranz in german, don't know if i translated that right). Even if the file gets corrupted in some way you still have good chances to decode it...

And you can save up to 50% hard disk space, while losing absolutely nothing.

I see no reason for wasting 50% storing capacity, no matter how cheap. Wav isn't worth all the messing around with meta data storing problems...

Looking for metadata for wav files, Any ideas for tagging software?

Reply #10 –
Quote from: bubbleguuum on
There's not much point in storing archived audio as WAV except if you're going to edit it.


There is also an other point. A friend whom i recommended foobar and who was exited about the ability of foobar to write any tag produces also music on his pc. As he has to work with wav.files he looked for an interesting way of managing them by setting certain tags and was disappointed that foobar couldn't do that. On the other side i really don't know if Cubase would accept tagged wav.files

Looking for metadata for wav files, Any ideas for tagging software?

Reply #11 –
Quote from: q-stankovic on
As he has to work with wav.files

Why does he absolutely have to work with wav files? Is he using some kind of "professional" software that cant accept modern lossless formats? If he begins to work with a lossless format like FLAC, WavePack, APE, etc instead of bloated wav files then not only will he save a significant amount of storage space but he can start using the tagging features you mentioned he was hoping to find in foobar.  The illusion that a naked wav file is somehow "better" or "pure" compared to a modern lossless container is completely unfounded as is repeatedly demonstrated in various non-foobar threads at Hydrogen Audio.

Looking for metadata for wav files, Any ideas for tagging software?

Reply #12 –
Is it just me, or do others find that Properties Metadata Value shows all blank for a WAV file that does have metadata?

Looking for metadata for wav files, Any ideas for tagging software?

Reply #13 –
Unfortunately it's not you.
This is one of those repeating questions that always seem to encounter dead-end answers. And since it's a legit question (at least outside of this forum, that is) you'll find a lot of threads about it.
Don't expect too much, though. To sum the answers I've read so far on the subject it's not going to happen.

Looking for metadata for wav files, Any ideas for tagging software?

Reply #14 –
> Unfortunately it's not you.

Thanks.

Is there any program documentation that would have told me of this failure and saved me the bother of installing?
 

Looking for metadata for wav files, Any ideas for tagging software?

Reply #15 –
> that a naked wav file is somehow "better" or "pure" compared to
> a modern lossless container is completely unfounded as is repeatedly
> demonstrated in various non-foobar threads at Hydrogen Audio.

You're mistaken. E.g. WAV opens about 100x faster than every lossless compressed format I have tried, in an editor program such as Goldwave.

Looking for metadata for wav files, Any ideas for tagging software?

Reply #16 –
By the FLAC author's (HA user: jcoalson) own guess FLAC -0 should open faster than WAV on most (x86) systems considering drive speed is the typical bottleneck.

Whether or not that means it opens in an audio editor faster or not isn't extremely relevant to fb2k's end goals.

[edit]Also, I'm pretty sure Yotsuya was talking about "audibility", as in typical nonsense audiophile claims, not speed.
elevatorladylevitateme

Looking for metadata for wav files, Any ideas for tagging software?

Reply #17 –
> Whether or not that means it opens in an audio editor faster or not isn't extremely relevant to fb2k's end goals.

fb2k's end goals are not relevant to the choice of WAV v compressed.

Looking for metadata for wav files, Any ideas for tagging software?

Reply #18 –

Software supporting unofficial id3 riff chunk wave tags:

TagnRename reads and writes id3 tags wave files (MusicMatch style)
AudioShell shell extension
dbPowerAmp reads and writes if id3 tag already present, otherwise writes standard wave INFO chunk
Mediamonkey reads id3 if present. Writes to INFO chunk only, leaves id3 intact.
Musicmatch

Any more?

Looking for metadata for wav files, Any ideas for tagging software?

Reply #20 –
Thanks.