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Album art with WAV files
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I too have ripped to WAV, and was able to get perhaps 95% of the art and meta data. I used Windows Media Player 11, but that was a mistake. I would call J River, to see what they reccomend. Or DBPowerAmp. My understanding is these 3rd party software progams can help considerably. But you need to rip using their software. I have a laptop that I burned all the cds through to an external hard drive, and it works well, but If I try to move the hard drive to another computer, the meta data is gone, and the tracks are messed up as well( all of the first tracks of my 500 cds, are missing and found in a folder named Unknown.

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The latest version of DBPowerAmp (R14) has a nice new feature that allows you to browse for album art from several online sources. It does a bang up job at ripping music to almost any format as well

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I used WMP for years but I am really stoked about the sound and convienence upgrade I got with J River. And it gets the art really well. My next project for the computer audio is setting up a NAS drive to use as another backup and for all the players to access.

DBpoweramp is also a great, great program. I primarily use it for converting files.

Trey

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MagusOCM500 wrote:

I too have ripped to WAV, and was able to get perhaps 95% of the art and meta data. I used Windows Media Player 11, but that was a mistake. I would call J River, to see what they reccomend. Or DBPowerAmp. My understanding is these 3rd party software progams can help considerably. But you need to rip using their software. I have a laptop that I burned all the cds through to an external hard drive, and it works well, but If I try to move the hard drive to another computer, the meta data is gone, and the tracks are messed up as well( all of the first tracks of my 500 cds, are missing and found in a folder named Unknown.

I already gave you a "better answer" in this thread (comment #6 "Helpful hint?????"):

http://forum.stereophile.com/content/musical-fidelity-v-link#comment-481412

Basically it boils down to:

1) Don't rip to or use wav files, use one of the many good losslessly compressed format such as flac or Apple lossless.

2) Use a good ripping program, such as dbPowerAmp (not free but easy to set up and configure) or Exact Audio Copy (free and very good, once you get it properly configured, not as easy as dbPowerAmp but very doable).

3) Properly tag the files with a good tagging program such as mp3tag.

4) And most importantly never, ever use either iTunes or Windows Media Player to RIP anything. They are both complete pieces of trash and totally useless. While I don't use either of these programs both can used for playback and library management, if you so chose but, I repeat, never use them to rip or burn anything!

I have ripped well over 4,000 CDs so I believe that I have just a wee bit of experience and expertise in this area.

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But you can't make em drink! Shirley they've read time and time again, don't use iTunes or WAV, yet here they come claiming jeez louise, I can't find my knees.

Try this...1/4 of all WAV's are unsupported! :-)

RG

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RGibran wrote:

But you can't make em drink! Shirley they've read time and time again, don't use iTunes or WAV, yet here they come claiming jeez louise, I can't find my knees.

Try this...1/4 of all WAV's are unsupported! :-)

RG

RG I couldn't agree more. Could you please exactly what you mean by "1/4 of all WAV's are unsupported!" Thanks!

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for being a smartass. The OP said DON'T tell him WAV's are unsupported because 3/4 of his are. :-)

RG

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jazzfan wrote:

... 4) And most importantly never, ever use either iTunes or Windows Media Player to RIP anything. They are both complete pieces of trash and totally useless. ...

Have no experience with the latter, but you couldn't be more wrong about the former.  In MY considerable experience, thanks.

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deckeda wrote:
jazzfan wrote:

... 4) And most importantly never, ever use either iTunes or Windows Media Player to RIP anything. They are both complete pieces of trash and totally useless. ...

Have no experience with the latter, but you couldn't be more wrong about the former.  In MY considerable experience, thanks.

 

The simple answer as to why iTunes is a complete and utter piece of trash is that it does NOT support flac. I need say no more and won't since it pointless arguing with an Apple fan boy.

When you're ready to get serious about computer based HIGH END audio just let me know until then be happy with iTunes' low fi approach.

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iTunes is great for my iPod, which is great for music at work (Zappa doing Heartbreak Hotel/Whipping Post medly at present) or on the go, but why limit yourself to mp3s at home? Get at least wav files, and they pale in comparison to higher res stuff you can rip from your own lps! iTunes is a wonderful convienence, but it is not hard or expensive to get much better sound.

 

Try it!

 

Trey

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Drtrey3 wrote:

iTunes is great for my iPod, which is great for music at work (Zappa doing Heartbreak Hotel/Whipping Post medly at present) or on the go, but why limit yourself to mp3s at home? Get at least wav files, and they pale in comparison to higher res stuff you can rip from your own lps! iTunes is a wonderful convienence, but it is not hard or expensive to get much better sound.

 

Try it!

 

Trey

Trey,

I don't mean to pick on you but what is this audiophile fascination with wav files? A proper compressed flac, or any other lossless codec, file is sonically equivalent to a wav file. In other words neither you nor anyone will ever be able to tell the difference between a wav file and a flac file made from that wav file regardless of the quality of the playback system. This has been proven many times by many different people running many different listening tests. No one has ever been able to tell the difference.

Add in the ability to tag flac files and their smaller size and there is no reason whatsoever to use wav files.

That said i complete agree with everything else you wrote.

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jazzfan, I can see your keen intellect and rapid wit have served you well. If only the rest of us, the unwashed, possesed such an inate ability to grasp the obvious and conclusively declare without debate (to say nothing of tiresome thought) all manor of topics. Very efficient and impressive. I envy such an ability to glide through life, instantly able to identify and deride people I've never even met. Truly, a wonder! So, it will bore you to read the rest. I would skip it if I were you. Let me be clear: it's not meant for or directed to you.

For others interested, FLAC-to-Apple Lossless conversion is quick, easy and doesn't hurt sound quality. And that's a good thing, since deciding on library or playback software should be a consideration based on several factors. Some issues can't be overcome for any of them ... but once an issue is overcome, it ceases to be a problem for all but a simpleton.

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deckeda wrote:

jazzfan, I can see your keen intellect and rapid wit have served you well. If only the rest of us, the unwashed, possesed such an inate ability to grasp the obvious and conclusively declare without debate (to say nothing of tiresome thought) all manor of topics. Very efficient and impressive. I envy such an ability to glide through life, instantly able to identify and deride people I've never even met. Truly, a wonder! So, it will bore you to read the rest. I would skip it if I were you. Let me be clear: it's not meant for or directed to you. For others interested, FLAC-to-Apple Lossless conversion is quick, easy and doesn't hurt sound quality. And that's a good thing, since deciding on library or playback software should be a consideration based on several factors. Some issues can't be overcome for any of them ... but once an issue is overcome, it ceases to be a problem for all but a simpleton.

Ha ha very funny. Perhaps I'm just a wee bit confused. Apple and the self-enclosed Apple universe, filled with all of these products and ideas from the mind of the God Steve Jobs and his legions of devoted followers, is marketed as the ease of use and intuitive user interface champion with all other systems (windows, unix, etc) just wanna be runner ups.

And yet I'm constantly reading about how many hoops an Apple user needs to jump through to get an Apple computer to function as a high end music server.  Want to play a flac file, no problem here's what you do:

1) find and download (and pay for)  a piece of software to convert the flac file to Apple lossless.

2) Install the above software, learn how to use it and convert the flac file.

3) Open iTunes and load the Apple lossless file. Oops, you forgot that the file is a high resolution file and iTunes is currently set for CD resolution playback so

3A) Close iTunes and reset playback for high resolution.

3B) Reopen iTunes and finally play high resolution file.

Versus (on a Windows system):

1) Open FooBar and play high resolution flac file.

As I stated earlier it pointless arguing with an Apple fan boy. Now that's really funny!

Sorry I forgot to mention that unlike the writers and editors of Stereophile who do their best not to step on the toes of their readers and therefore may not be fully honest about the problems of high end audio playback when using an Apple computer I have no good reason not to tell the entire truth. And sometimes the truth hurts, especially for fan boys.

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Dude, you are not picking on me at all. And if you did, well, I bet I could take it and we would still stay friends.

I have wav files because I used to use a player that would not handle flac files. I LOVE flac files, but I have 2000 cds worth of wav files already ripped! All my new rips are flac. And I am even up to the Bs in converting the wav files. It is a long, boring job, but what the hey. I completely agree with you about flac being superior. I just did LOTS of ripping before I changed to a player that would deal with them.

But please feel free to give me grief about the topic of your choice man.

This weekend I ripped Every Picture Tells a Story, My Aim is True (the mofi vinyl) and half of Emperor Tomato Ketchup at 24/96 flac. The first two sound great! The last one had 30 minutes of music on each side of vinyl and was cut with the lowest levels I have seen on vinyl. Thank goodness it was a clean pressing! The resulting flac files came out on the low side (even with me messing with the volume) but are still interesting and compelling enough to get saved at 24/96. Some compressed vinyl I save at 24/44, because there is not enough there there to justify the extra resoloution.

Given my software, I record 24/96 wav files then convert to 24/96 flac, and they sound so righteous!

But man, I have a boat load of wav to convert. But flac is worth it in my opinion, smaller and thank god for the tagging.

Keep posting bro.

 

Trey

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Trey,

Since you have so many wav files that you are in the process of converting to flac I would strongly suggest that you take a close look at dbPowerAmp. I'm not sure if you're of this great program but if you aren't then you are in for a most welcome surprise.

dbPowerAmp has a batch function which will convert all your wav files to flac files provided that you have the space for the flac files available on the drive. After the conversion a simple search for all the wav files (*.wav) will allow you to delete all wav files with a single click. Of course this still leaves the file tagging. For that i would recommend mp3tag, which will allow you to retrieve the tags via freedb and therefore save you lots of time and typing.

If you have any questions or need any pointers on how to use either of these programs, just give me a shout.

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I have dbPower amp, I had NO idea I could do that. And with mp3tag, I could get a REAL hobby instead of tagging.

 

Wow, this is life changing. Kinda, but really. Thanks man, you are a real friend to me! I will get started on this TONIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!

Update to follow! THANKS!!!!!!

 

Trey

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Trey,

The batch conversion feature in dbPowerAmp is pretty sweet. Depending on how you have your folders (directories) organized it can take a few seconds to a few minutes to set up. For example if you use a folder system like this:

drive\music\jazz a\artist\album

where all the files in the sub-folders need to be converted then all you need to do is select the "jazz a" (root) folder and make sure that select sub-folders is checked and you're good to go.

In the worst case you would have to individually select each folder containing any wav files but even that only takes a few minutes. Plus you can batch convert from several different formats (wav, ape, apple lossless, etc.) to flac all at the same time.

Tagging and cover art are more time consuming but I'm pretty sure that there are programs available which will allow you batch tag multiple folders/albums as well as programs which will find cover art for multiple albums as well. Try doing a search and always remember that google is your friend!

And regardless of which program you use for converting, tagging and retrieving cover art, ALWAYS double check the results!

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the conversion process this morning. I love the smell of flac in the morning! Next will be checking out tagging programs to find one that will get the ball rolling. Again, thanks jazzfan, you made my month. I will keep you up to date.

 

Trey 

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Drtrey3 wrote:

the conversion process this morning. I love the smell of flac in the morning! Next will be checking out tagging programs to find one that will get the ball rolling. Again, thanks jazzfan, you made my month. I will keep you up to date.

 

Trey 

Great news! From what I've seen over the years on various forums (Stereophile, Head-fi and Squeezebox) mp3tag appears to be the gold standard for tagging programs on a Windows computer. There are lots of scripts and batch files that people have written for mp3tag so you should try searching for a batch tagging script.

For cover art now I just add make sure that all the new items in music library have proper cover art. However there are several album art finder/downloader programs available. Here is a list i put together after a quick search. I don't and haven't used any of these programs but perhaps one will work for you. I did use a similar program a few years back and it worked quite well but that program has vanished.

Media Art Aggregator: http://maa.codeplex.com/

Album Cover Art Downloader: http://www.unrealvoodoo.org/hiteck/projects/albumart/

Album Art Downloader: http://sourceforge.net/projects/album-art/

MuvUnder Cover: http://www.muvenum.com/products/muvundercover/

I hope that one of these programs will help to ease the pain.

jazzfan
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Drtrey3 wrote:

the conversion process this morning. I love the smell of flac in the morning! Next will be checking out tagging programs to find one that will get the ball rolling. Again, thanks jazzfan, you made my month. I will keep you up to date.

 

Trey 

So how are things going?

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The batch conversion went without a hitch. Thank you so much brother, I do not think I would have undertaken the project without you telling me about the batch function.

The tagging is a problem because of me. I just do not accept that all the Billy Joel songs are "rock" or all the Alice in Chains songs are "metal" etc. So I am going through and doing the genres my way. It is important to me to be able to listen to "swing" or "lounge" and hear what I want, so I am doing it myself. J River media player has good enough tagging/editing tools to make it OK, and I just owned that I wanted it done to my specifications. All the tagging programs I tried lumped the songs together in a typically bogus genre so I figured the problem was my exacting standards. So I shut up and started tagging.

Of course, I listen while I do it, so it is not so bad. I am through the Bs. Well, the start of the Bs, and I have a ways to go, but it is worth it to me in the final use.

Trey

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Drtrey3 wrote:

The batch conversion went without a hitch. Thank you so much brother, I do not think I would have undertaken the project without you telling me about the batch function.

The tagging is a problem because of me. I just do not accept that all the Billy Joel songs are "rock" or all the Alice in Chains songs are "metal" etc. So I am going through and doing the genres my way. It is important to me to be able to listen to "swing" or "lounge" and hear what I want, so I am doing it myself. J River media player has good enough tagging/editing tools to make it OK, and I just owned that I wanted it done to my specifications. All the tagging programs I tried lumped the songs together in a typically bogus genre so I figured the problem was my exacting standards. So I shut up and started tagging.

Of course, I listen while I do it, so it is not so bad. I am through the Bs. Well, the start of the Bs, and I have a ways to go, but it is worth it to me in the final use.

Trey

 

I find the genre to be the least importan of all tags. Maybe it's just me but I really don't use the genre function at all. Besides which where does one stop: is Art Blakey "jazz" or "hard bop" and is Joni Mitchell "folk" (early work), "rock" (later work), "jazz" (middle period) or just plain "vocal"? Sorry but I just don't like genres.

Anyway it's great that things are working out for you. Any luck with album art?

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was never a problem for me. The J River program does a great job all by itself. As to tags, I tend to listen more by genre and year a lot. I guess there are 4 ways I listen. To an album, to an artist, to a playlist, or a genre/year tag. It is fun for me to hear what was happening in 1967 or just hit Psychedelic and sit down and groove. Probably I use artist and genre the most. Where to stop IS the important question! I have Bebop, Swing, Jazz, Cool Jazz, and Free Jazz! Some genres I am offended by. New Age and Christian (or Religious) and Holiday in particular! Phil Keaggy does great work in lots of genres, and he is listed as Christian or Religious on all the tagging programs. That helps me how? And his orchestral Christmas music is lumped in with his solo acoustic and his rock? No thanks! So I split each album out. Obsessive, I know, but it makes my listening happier!

What are your most important tags JF?

Trey

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Hey guys, been a while and thought I would check back in, after the big switch in January. Wow, some of the forum is getting weeds and all ya hear is crickets, lol. And who let all of this riff-raff into the room, to steal a line from Roger Waters.

- For tagging, I use Foobar for most of it, then if something needs tweaked a bit more, I use mp3tag (i.e. converting back to ID3.2.3 from 2.4 for my portable player and for embedding artwork). For mass tagging MP3tag is the bomb, I personally haven’t used it for that in a while.

- Like Trey, I’ll record vinyl at 16/44.1 or 24/96 as a WAV, edit as a WAV then convert to a FLAC. Sounds great.

- For rips, I use EAC, which has been tweaked, after a bunch of research and listening. After EAC pulls the album info from the FreeDB, I normally crosscheck the info with the Musicbrainz database, I hate honked up tags, lol.

- For genres, I keep them very simple, few and wide. You could spend a lifetime setting up genres and sub-genres, I may be a touch anal about tags but not that much. I setup specific playlists, if I need to narrow the scope of a genre.

- For album art, I normally use Google image and look for the biggest and clearest image, save it as a BMP, resize to about a 500x500 JPG then embed it using MP3tag. I also leave a 'folder.jpg' copy in the album's folder.

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ljbrown8 wrote:

Hey guys, been a while and thought I would check back in, after the big switch in January. Wow, some of the forum is getting weeds and all ya hear is crickets, lol. And who let all of this riff-raff into the room, to steal a line from Roger Waters.

- For tagging, I use Foobar for most of it, then if something needs tweaked a bit more, I use mp3tag (i.e. converting back to ID3.2.3 from 2.4 for my portable player and for embedding artwork). For mass tagging MP3tag is the bomb, I personally haven’t used it for that in a while.

- Like Trey, I’ll record vinyl at 16/44.1 or 24/96 as a WAV, edit as a WAV then convert to a FLAC. Sounds great.

- For rips, I use EAC, which has been tweaked, after a bunch of research and listening. After EAC pulls the album info from the FreeDB, I normally crosscheck the info with the Musicbrainz database, I hate honked up tags, lol.

- For genres, I keep them very simple, few and wide. You could spend a lifetime setting up genres and sub-genres, I may be a touch anal about tags but not that much. I setup specific playlists, if I need to narrow the scope of a genre.

- For album art, I normally use Google image and look for the biggest and clearest image, save it as a BMP, resize to about a 500x500 JPG then embed it using MP3tag. I also leave a 'folder.jpg' copy in the album's folder.

Great post!

however you told us everything but how you actually play the music. How one plays back the music on one's computer is as important as how carefully one names and tags the files since different players will produce different results with the same set of tags.

I use several different Logitech Squeezebox players along with the Squeezebox Server software to play back my computer based digital audio files.

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My media player is Foobar2000 (1.0.3). Which I should probably upgrade, actually. Been using it for about 6 years now (started with 0.8.3). I love the customizations and the low overhead. I currently have a long 50 ohm coaxial cable routed to the main rig, which I think does fairly well. None of my gear is high end by any stretch of the imagination, but I have a good time and it makes my toes tap, eh? 

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ljbrown8 wrote:

My media player is Foobar2000 (1.0.3). Which I should probably upgrade, actually. Been using it for about 6 years now (started with 0.8.3). I love the customizations and the low overhead. I currently have a long 50 ohm coaxial cable routed to the main rig, which I think does fairly well. None of my gear is high end by any stretch of the imagination, but I have a good time and it makes my toes tap, eh? 

 

Why upgrade? Foobar2000 is a very good media player and like you stated has low overhead and is highly customizable. I use Foobar to listen to music before I load it into Squeezebox Server just to make sure that everything is okay.

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jazzfan wrote:
ljbrown8 wrote:

My media player is Foobar2000 (1.0.3). Which I should probably upgrade, actually. Been using it for about 6 years now (started with 0.8.3). I love the customizations and the low overhead. I currently have a long 50 ohm coaxial cable routed to the main rig, which I think does fairly well. None of my gear is high end by any stretch of the imagination, but I have a good time and it makes my toes tap, eh? 

 

Why upgrade? Foobar2000 is a very good media player and like you stated has low overhead and is highly customizable. I use Foobar to listen to music before I load it into Squeezebox Server just to make sure that everything is okay.

No Ralph, upgrade my version of Foobar, I love Foobar. But it's not a big issue for me, I'm not a fancy layout type of user. What I have now works fine. My only reason for upgrading would be for plug-in support. I'll try to attach a screenshot of my layout, which is setup for functionality not beauty.

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No Ralph, upgrade my version of Foobar, I love Foobar. But it's not a big issue for me, I'm not a fancy layout type of user. What I have now works fine. My only reason for upgrading would be for plug-in support. I'll try to attach a screenshot of my layout, which is setup for functionality not beauty.

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Well, looks like they are sitting on my reply with the Foobar layout screenshot attached. Anyhoo, I love Foobar, so I would not be upgrading from it (which I don't think possible, actually). But I may upgrade the version of Foobar, so I can stay current on the Foobar plug-ins. Since I don't do the fancy screen layouts and I'm more concerned for search, tagging, and playlist functionality, I only worry about the major version updates. If we're gonna keep talking about setups and Foobar, we might want to start a fresh thread, eh? Otherwise the info will be buried in this photo tags one.

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The smell of ignorance and mendacity in this thread is stunning.

1) ITunes is not a player, it plays nothing! ITunes is a database and library program.

2) I paid nothing for the program I use to rip and convert music. It is called XLD and it is free and takes no more time to find and download than Foobar. It will rip to ALAC or FLAC or whatever and convert between them.  Not to mention that it will automagicly load files into the ITunes database.

3) Jazzfan forgot to get bit perfect output from windows he had to install ASIO or something like it to avoid the Windows Mixer. Oops.

4) I may be simple but I don't find it hard to add genere tags to music, Jazz is jazz and there are subsets of that but Hard Bop, Swing, Dixieland, progressive, it is all jazz. Joni sang folk rock when younger and her voice was the purest, and Jazz later in life. not hard for me to figure it out. But like I said I'm a simple soul.

5) One of the complaints about the Appleverse that Mr Jazzfan has is that some programs cost money. But last I looked so did a number of the programs listed here such as DBPoweramp, JRiver, etc. Meanwhile ITunes, Quicktime (which does the playing for ITunes), and XLD are all free. So is Cog or Max if you want alternative options.

6) One of the nice things about a Mac is that not only can I run OSX but I can and do run Windows. So I can use those Windows programs if I want to. I can even run linux at the same time I'm running OSX and Windows. Works great for me.

 

YMMV

 

--

 

 

When they discover the center of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to discover they are not it. ~ Bernard Bailey

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   Well, I certainly hope you're not referring to my posts, sir. Sorry, I don't know much about running Macs just repairing them, but then again, I never mentioned Macs or Apples in my posts. Therefore, since I never mentioned them, I certainly didn't lie about them! So yes on the former and a big no on the latter.

   As far as, the K-Mixer issue, I did use ASIO drivers a few years back but stopped in favor of kernel streaming, which has worked great in my case.

   Over the years, as stated earlier, I have worked on Macs and even used them as an interface tool, for multiple machine database work (Stratus mainframes). Macs are good computers, but I like the PC. I'm sorry, if that makes me appear to be an uncultured rube, in your eyes, but with over 30 years of computer experience, I would beg to differ. Have a good day, sir.

P.S. And for the love of Pete! This thread is about a photo tagging / embedding issue with wave files. Which AFAIK is not possible, except in the case of using a player or music manager that will do it for use within that specific program. So if one opens or plays that wave file elsewhere, presto, no photo. That is why we PC users convert to FLAC files. Now, if AIFF and ALAC files behave similarly, that would be good information from the Mac user camp.

Brown Sound
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Wow, that came out huge! I expected it to be scaled or have scroll bars, sorry guys.

deckeda
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ljbrown8: It's highly doubtful he was referring to you.

ljbrown8 wrote:

P.S. And for the love of Pete! This thread is about a photo tagging / embedding issue with wave files. Which AFAIK is not possible, except in the case of using a player or music manager that will do it for use within that specific program. So if one opens or plays that wave file elsewhere, presto, no photo. That is why we PC users convert to FLAC files. Now, if AIFF and ALAC files behave similarly, that would be good information from the Mac user camp.

You are of course correct here; from the user's viewpoint, metadata consistency and availability is dependent upon both the filetype and the database manager used, with the occasional OS influence.

So even in the case where a filetype such as FLAC is chosen that doesn't depend upon the database to handle metadata, you still must consider your database choice if other filetypes will sometimes get added to the library, or if any of the files will be used, sent or added to other devices and so on.

I don't see how anyone can declare this-or-that filetype superior to anything else without implicitly and previously defining what their other, more bedrock objectives are.

You mentioned AIFF and ALAC. I've never traded AIFF files or moved them around to other computers but I suspect that filetype doesn't embed metadata. Apple Lossless, on the other hand, is a flavor of MPEG4. So it can have say, album art embedded in it. iTunes doesn't embed artwork however, or at least not consistently; you'd have to use another utility that can read MPEG4 audio files for that. 

On the other hand, if iTunes or some other database manager that can store ALAC was used, it wouldn't matter if any metadata were embedded. The issue, as always, is that people don't all use the same database managers.

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On the other other hand, I see FLAC files posted all the time with varying states of metadata included, so I'm not sure what advantage they really have if few people use them consistently. Little wonder folks include separate image files, text files and so on.

All of which is to say, use a database manager you like and to hell with embedded metadata, it's a battle you can't win and frankly don't need to win, unless your world revolves around as little conversion as possible for others. Which again, would merely be a different bedrock objective than personal use. Cheers!

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Thanks deckeda.

So the tagging situation is pretty much the same for both AIFF/ALAC and WAV/FLAC. Good to know info.

Yes, I do consider tagging a pretty personal affair. After all, it is my collection and since I don't share it, other than with my kids, it should reflect my tastes and how I use it. I do use a 'sort' artist field, so the entries are ordered correctly and easier to search. The main reason I keep an image file in an album's folder is my portable (non-iPod). The player is a Cowon D2, which does read embedded art in native mode, but I use the RockBox firmware replacement, which does not read embedded art. 

And WOOHOO I got my screen name back !!! If you need yours back, e-mail SM. Thanks again, Stephen.

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