HDX ripped Wave files re-tagging

I shall have to let someone else answer the specific question about software that would do this editing for you, but if you still have access to the HDX, there is another way I think.

The problem is that there is no standardised way of storing metadata in WAV files and Naim invented their own way, which Audirvanar doesn't understand. But if you still have the HDX, then you could get it to transcode everything to FLAC.  It can do that although it will take a day or so for that many albums. Metadata is held in a standard way in FLAC, so having done the mass transcode, you could move all the files to your NAS and then have the upnp server transcode back to WAV when it is playing.  This is said to be the best compromise between the file space and sound quality.

i hope this helps.

best

David

I see, thanks. Yes, I still have the HDX.

It's not transcoding you want. You actually want to convert the WAV files to FLAC. You do this in the desktop client - just right click on the album and you'll get an option to convert.  If you do this at the top of the file tree it will do a mass conversion for you. 

As HH wrote - this is the only way to ensure correct taging is assigned to all your ripped CDs. 800 CDs may take overnight to convert.

NAIM servers (HDX and UnitiServe) use proprietary tagging protocol to store metadata alongside the WAV files. Accessing them outside the NAIM ecosystem is not really something external server softwares do.

As mentioned above, convert to FLAC on the HDX before copying the files to any other device, and the metadata should then be usable. This also has the benefit of reducing file size, so you save lots of storage space on the HDX. 

You then have the option to set the HDX to convert back to WAV 'on the fly' during playback, which some people feel sounds slightly better than playing the FLACs. I would suggest trying all this with just a handful of albums first to make sure it all works for you.

Alright, thanks, does it take many days or really just overnight to convert 800+ albums?

Checkthisout68 posted:

Alright, thanks, does it take many days or really just overnight to convert 800+ albums?

Once you start the process the softwarewill give you a good estimate. My guess is around 12-14 hours. 

When I did this on my Unitiserve, I had only ripped about 200 albums to it, but I was surprised how quick it was to convert them. As far as I can remember, it only took a couple of hours. 

Some people hear differences in favour of WAV over FLAC. Some don't. If you don't, the FLAC option is a godsend.

I do. So when I was in an analogous situation to you I retagged the lot. I used dBpoweramp, which won't do everything automatically but has a lot of batching features. It took me a long time (starting with most frequently played albums first) but it was worth it. I got to tag my stuff exactly how I wanted it tagged. 

I now rip CDs with dBpoweramp and it allows me to get all the tags right (and all the junk removed) before I rip. Yes I am a control freak. But if third party databases contained better quality information and were better able at identifying and tagging different versions of the same album, multi album sets and classical music, maybe I wouldn't need to be (so much).