Tags and Tagging

There are plenty of tagging apps for mac, what there is not is a way to read the sidecar files of a bloody ripped wav, hence your issue.

i believe their is something on pc that can read, but my advice is go to the loft and get the cds out again, never rip to wav again, it might as well be proprietary!

Hi Meerkat,

What is it exactly you need to do ? Are you looking for software that picks up the most important Tags for you from the web (i.e. Artist, AlbumArtist, Album, Year etc), or do you want to adjust the current tagging with some additional information ?

Cheers,

Iver

Gary, why are you using sidecar files for WAV files for? You should be using the contained WAV chunk elements not sidecar files, using sidecar files is unnecessary and defeats the purpose of the RIFF structure used in in AIF and WAV files.

Can you point to a cost effective universal tagging program in OSX. I have yet find one but would be very interested if there is one available. (FLAC, WAV, AIF, ALAC extensive tagging and album art)

Hi Meerkat,

I find Metadatics very neat. Did you try the Help->Metadatics Help menu entry ? There's a Basics section in the Help that explains a bit how to start, and then there are more advanced topics. True, it could be better, but if you make a copy of some files to tag, you can try the different features and see if it suits you.

Metadatics makes correct use of the Vorbis comment for FLAC files -- multiple identical tags included --, and saves INFO chunks as well as the ID3 version of your choice to WAV files, if you so wish. Be sure to set the Metadatics->Preferences to your liking.

I know, it doesn't really help...

Maurice

PS: Simon, did you try Metadatics ? And if yes, why doesn't it work for you ?

No I didn't. Thanks for the tip.. I shall take a look.

dBpoweramp. It's a useful suite and the tag editor is very good. Batch files no problem, but you still have to do it an album at a time for some tags. It inserts a right click Edid Tag item into the right click menu.

Quicker just to re-rip them in dbPoweramp?

If the tag editor in dBpoweramp is sufficient for MK's needs, re ripping would not be quicker.

It's got a good batch converter too.

Thanks for your replies...

Gary: I think you are right, against my typing skills, It will be quicker and easier to rip the CDs again, which totals nearly 300. dbpoweramp is going to be released for Mac users very shortly. I just don't want be held to ransom, by the way the UnitiServe stores the WAV data.

Iver: Correct, just the basic stuff, not that interested in who play's violin on what track. I think I'll re rip.

m0omo0: I gave it a damn good go, I added the files, but didn't know where to go from there. Sounds like I'm being thick, but I did it on Jriver just fine, just basic stuff, Artist, Album, Track number, Track name, and of course the art work. But once done on Jriver, I couldn't see a way to export it back to the NAS drive The artwork is easy to do, just add folder.jpg.

Harry & Gavin: dbpoweramp is a great idea, when it's released for Mac users in the next few months...hopefully! Then I'll re rip, using my Mac.

Simon: You'll have no problem using Metadatics, but for people like me, I need step by step instructions. 

Ah, Mac, right. Bugger!

Simon mediarage for mac is one of the most fully featured. 

It wont help with wavs though, i know you know your stuff, but you seem unwilling to acknowledge the difficulty of tagging wavs. Very few programmes are able to read other programmes wav tagging, and the reason is wavs are a royal pain to tag. 

If you feel i am incorrect then please tell us how to take a wav ripped on say a serve, or with itunes or any of the myriad other options and read them tags with another programme with no faffing?

my advice is and always has been avoid wav. I dont buy the it sounds better bit, i cannot detect it, and your options moving forward with flac is so much broader and easier, especially regards tagging!

Meerkat, the latest software for serve has the option to encode to flac.

Oh, but how lazy I am, I didn't even read the OP thoroughly.

Meerkat, If you ripped the CDs with a UnitiServe, all the tags are in separate files/database and you must use nServe to edit them. Why do you need to tag the WAV files themselves ?

@Gary: Thanks for the tip about MediaRage.

Incidentally, if any of you want out of the wav nightmare the serve can now re-encode your current wavs to flac.

But if you do follow up on this ridiculous advice, please make sure you only use uncompressed flac, so not one of the compression levels 0 - 8!!!!

cheers

aleg

I think that I can clear up the confusion here.  David (Meerkat) I believe has sent is uServe off and will not get it back.  He now has an external Store on a nas with the wav rips, and wants to migrate them to a nas that will serve them with its built in uPnP server. 

David, if you still have/had the uServe, you could use it to do the conversion from wav to flac, and it would put the metadata into the flac files.  But otherwise . . . the options are as others mentioned above.  Either re-rip, or try one of the metadata editors that will try to match the files against an online database.  The matching thing has never worked all that well for me.  I've played with Picard (from MusicBrainz) and it matches a lot of the files but sometimes not all.  But given that it gets you started, for me, it would be preferable than re-ripping.  But I'm a proficient typist

@Bart, <facepalm> Now I remember...

@Gary,

I'm afraid you have a point here. I never really bothered as I only use Logitech Media Server, that can read almost everything one can imagine. But just to test, I've just tried to import 3 WAV files into iTunes. The first one wasn't tagged, then tagged with iTunes. In fact, iTunes doesn't "tag" a WAV file, it keeps the metadata separate in its own database, and Quick View or Metadatics don't show any info. The second was tagged with Metadatics as INFO chunks: iTunes doesn't see anything and Quick View shows correct information but with wrong character set (a Metadatics problem, I guess). The third one was tagged with Metadatics as ID3 v2.4: iTunes doesn't see any info, neither Quick View.

I quickly tried a few other programs, with various results. I agree iTunes has its own idiosyncrasies, but this tends to suggest that tagging WAV might indeed not really be "universal", at least on a Mac. But, as I said, it worked for me with LMS, and it is known to work well with Asset too. So it really depends on one's own needs.

@Aleg,

To your own ears, does it still matters if you're using a UPnP server and transcode to WAV ?

Maurice

I never will use a UPnP based system, so I can't comment with experience of transcoding.

But the reason why there appears to be a difference (= additional processor cycles) won't happen if you do the encoding outside of and before sending it to the playback device.

So I can imagine with transcoding it to WAV you also have the best.

cheers

Aleg

Thanks Aleg. I thought you were using a -- quite sophisticated and carefully tuned -- computer-based music player, that's why I wanted to ask to fully grab the context of your advice.

ATB,

Maurice

m0omo0: The UnitiServe is no longer part of my system.

Bart: You are 100% correct. For me, the UnitiServe is no longer an option. I think that re ripping, will at least give me a 'clean slate'.

Gary: I'm hoping to pick up my 'new toy' today, so I will do a side by side comparison of my downloaded Hi Res FLAC music, against the UnitiServe's ripped WAVs. One thing I am sure of though, my 96/24-bit FLAC version of Hotel California, blows the ripped CD clean out of the water!  

Maurice

So as not to have to repeat myself, look here in another thread some of my remarks about UPnP and alternative frontier developments in computer based audio.

Cheers

Aleg

Hi Gary, thanks for the tip. incidentally I do recognise the difficulty caused with some software, historically mostly, but not exclusively on the OSX platform, not supporting the commonly used methods for wav tagging, much to the end users frustration and associated difficulty in using these files. I can't help thinking there was a little bit of a Mac conspiracy against wav because of it being pushed by Microsoft way back in the early years.. But I could just be wrong here. Anyway hopefully with  new apps like dBpoweramp and others being developed for OSX these format usability differences should largely become a thing of the past.

PS Mediarage, does according to their web site support reading and writing of WAV tags?

Simon

Perhaps an unfortunate name, but MP3tag will tag flac, at least on Windoze. It is a decent tool and will tag using the file name, a start at least. It also provides basic scripting which I have found useful. So, don't dismiss it based solely on its' name, try it, it's free.

best,

timster

I must admit since I have used dBPoweramp for the last 4 yours or so and rip and store either as WAV or FLAC, tagging has ceased to be an issue and I take it for granted. I even create my own tags with the above software which allows me to customise my library to aid searching and sorting for my streamer and other apps. It is all so easy - I guess its like most things in the IT world - if you use the right tools its straightforward, if you don't it can become a PIAS!

I agree its irritating that Naim use only a proprietary solution  with their ripping solution and WAV. It would be so simple for Naim to remedy in software, there is even OpenSource c and c+ code to do exactly this,  and support INFO and/or ID3 tags - but because of this lack of interoperability  they lost a sale of a  Unitiserve to me. 

Happy Christmas all

Simon