Tag Editing Question

Mike, that's quite an achievement, very original, how did you manage that?  And no I've not seen it.

How about taking a copy and removing all but the bare essential minimum of tags and seeing if it plays OK.

A similar suggestion which I have used in some occasions where album art could not be changed: concert to WAV then reconvert to FLAC and edit the metadata 

Maybe the tracks think that they are separate albums. If the album is tagged as a set then maybe the even tracks are 1/2 and the odd 2/2. Sensible software will show the issue. I use MediaMonkey for all tagging and playlist management.

Mike - what file format are they?

I once had some problems with AIFF files - they would not play, because there was a "." (Dot) in the name of the file, at the end.

Hi Adam,  WAV  (as always)    The thing is its a Qobuz download (via zip) & I haven't touched it   It plays the same from both NAS UPnP & USB.    Re Bananahead. track numbers 1/2 or 2/2,  not so ............ Qobuz use IRFM sequencing for the actual track number & IPRT for the disc number,  these are correct & the same as other Qobuz albums.  Track#  & Disc 1/1 are blank & also the same as other Qobuz 

 Once i have domestic duties done I will get going with some investigations,  I was hoping we had a forum'ite with a quick fix,  oh well.

Hi Mike, I have a quick fix to completely prevent the problem...

Delete the files! 

Reconvert the files from wav to wav with dBPoweramp.

I have to do this regularly on downloads from Qobuz. I don't know what they do, but they do mess up regulary. But all it takes is to reconvert it from wav to wav with a proper converter.

I download lots of stuff from Qobuz and it's virtually always fine. I use FLAC though. It's odd that their WAV versions are a bit flaky. 

I had a Qobuz download which behaved something like this.

I striped out all tags and started again. Fail.

I converted to FLAC, striped out all the tags and started again. OK.

Converted to WAV. Success.

What I can't remember is if I needed to redo the tags on the final WAV files, but that will hopefully be obvious.

Thanks for all the suggestions,  but as it happens I went off to do some fiddling & did not read your ideas,  but thanks anyway.  

I fixed it - All the work was done on a USB stick,  this was the actual file as downloaded from Qobuz - (the same as the NAS copy).   It would not play correctly from USB, just like from NAS, starting on tr-2 & playing all the even numbers, or if forced to play tr-1 first it played all the odd numbers.     I also noticed it was slow to load,  not a huge amount,  just a second or so slower.      I stripped out the tags that I thought were related to track numbering,  including a delete on the space in case something was hidden.  No change.   I then converted to FLAC to see if anything extra in FLAC metadata showed up.  Nothing.    I then tried playing these FLAC files - F### !!! -  its playing correctly.     Converted back to WAV,  it plays correctly !!!!

OK while at it in fiddle & editing mode I got into the title lines & cleaned up_those_ very_ annoying_ underscore-links_ 01-02 track numbers & SMRP & LLS. things that Qobuz have with their downloads.  I then deleted the NAS album copy & uploaded the reworked USB copy - Happy Listening.  

So thanks Aleg, HH & Harry, even though I had not seen your comments you are on or close to the money, I think I will take on the  Aleg idea & reconvert WAV-WAV with all my Qobuz in future.     Huge you go sit on the naughty step.  

I think that the practical lesson is that converting to flac, editing tags and then converting back to wav is s.o.p. when tagging issues arise.

My guess is that the "simplicity" of the tag system for flac files is the reason.  There seems to be less standardization with wav and tag editors for wav; it's easy for one program (say dbPoweramp) not to "see" something somewhere in a wav file, whereas another might see it.  For flac it's standardized and 'all there' for standard tag/metadata editors. 

Not sure I completely agree Bart,  it seems to be more of a Qobuz related cause; I've only had this one problem & its with Qobuz,  Aleg reports more experiences of the same,  & again all with WAV Qobuz & we both seem to have individually found the same solution.   I'm gonna download FLAC from Qobuz in future & convert to WAV myself.  (plus edit_out_ the_Qo-buz_ underscore &  -LLS crap).  Worth a try whatever 

Another thing I found is the new Synology DSM-6 software does not have the same auto-indexing,  I had to manually re-index to see the new uploaded album.  The Synology forum has chat about the same,  its a minor irritation that hopefully the next DSM-6 rev will fix it.

hi,
as mentionned by Bart, it's "well-known" that WAW files doesn't support the TAG properly. But Flac's does.
As a Qobuz client, Ialways download Flac files (which plays porperly) and then convert them to other format if needed. But you can store Flac's files and ask your NAS to convert them in WAW while playing....it might be the simplest (and most efficient in term of storage space) to maintain proper library

Mike-B posted:

Not sure I completely agree Bart,  it seems to be more of a Qobuz related cause; I've only had this one problem & its with Qobuz,  Aleg reports more experiences of the same,  & again all with WAV Qobuz & we both seem to have individually found the same solution. 

I think that we're likely both saying the same thing actually!  Something about the way Qobuz tags at least SOME wav files is inconsistent with what your server and/or the Naim App expect to see.  Converting to flac, and then back again if so desired, allows one to "normalize" the tagging for one's particular system.  My guess is that such is MUCH less likely to occur if you were to download flac from Qobuz, merely because flac tagging is more standardized.

Us Naim server owners can still have difficulty with some commercial flac downloads, as the Naim servers are comfortable with a somewhat limited character set.  Accented letters, etc., in a file or folder name, or in the tags themselves, can render files unable to be reported out by the server.  And sometimes if, for example, track 5 suffers this problem, no track after no. 5 will be reported out even if their tags and names are all OK.  For my UnitiServe music, I have to be careful to use only the very basic ascii characters (akin to what I understand Unix in its infancy wanted to see).  The Naim servers can't even deal with a <space> in the name of the backup folder/directory!

Hi FDiop,

As was demonstrated to me a year ago by Aleg, Wave file format has supported other data segments (including metadata) since the advent of Windows XP.  It's just that some of Microsoft's documentation (e.g. MSDN) hasn't caught up with this yet.

Final turn on this subject,  last evening & today I've selected out all my Qobuz albums & reconverted .wav to .wav.   I also stripped out the annoying way Qobuz write the title line with 01-04-Artist_Name-Track_Title_LSS.wav.   But as they all played OK (unlike that one problem album)  nothing has changed other than my OCD levels.