i-tunes fXXcks it up...Grrr

Hi Richard.

Thanks. I am already restored. Proper backups do work.

Your dealer is not correct. WAV files do support tagging it is just not exactly  tagging that Apple is prepared to recognise.

It is a complicated and overtly political landscape as far as I can see. At bottom as we have generally discussed here Apple pursues a policy that aims to lock people into their specific way of doing things. This is not just purely commercial but carries the history of their battles with Microsoft. Here we have a classical example of the two sides of this coin.

Microsoft embraced WAV as a format and to illustrate that if I scan the WAV files in my NAS Music folder using Windows Media Player (WMP) it is fine with recognising my WAV tags, leaves my album folders alone, and displays them along with Album art exactly as I filed them.

Apple on the other hand introduced i-tunes as a commercially oriented software to sell music downloads in its own format, mp3, which was primarily compressed to make downloading practical and quick ( things went a lot slower then) BUT would also differentiate it completely from WMP and WAV.

As time went by Apple realised mp3 was OK for i-pods but they needed lossless format handling so what do they do? They go off and invent ALAC and AIFF rather than embracing WAV and FLAC.

Over time they have adapted iTunes and made it possible to PLAY WAV files out of iTunes but apparently thats as far as they are prepared to go. iTunes clearly refuses to read WAV tags which read fine in WMP ...just because!!!

As another example you have to use at least a software plugin to play FLAC in iTunes or convert them to AIFF in spite of the fact that is also an open source free codec, again.....just because!!!

It seems if you are completely loyal to iTunes and and happy to do everything the Apple way it works fine but step outside of that and as I have just learned you are courting problems.

Geoff

Dear Geoff,

Your post makes perfect sense to me, and your last paragraph sums it up in a nutshell.

Though I have been using iTunes as my playing and ripping arrangement for three years, I was never asked for my Credit Card details. I don't know why, but it never happened. Perhaps they knew I was as poor as a church mouse, so did not bother!

I am gradually converting Alac to AIF, for the subtle improvement this brings to flow and ease in presentation over ALAC, even on a quite basic system. I think next year that I'll get a new PC with a one TB secondary Hard Drive for the ITunes folder rather than my current half TB one, and keep the current PC for other duties - playing DVDs and the net etc.

Glad you are up and running again.

ATB from George

@Geoff P

Thanks for a really clear and all embracing explanation of the iTunes situation. I use it without any bother, but I keep strictly within the Apple orchard.  But it is irritating, this silly rivalry between these two big companies. 

Apple do seem to have a very big problem at their core, just look how they have now taken on Samsung. Idiots, I think.  Live and let live, is my motto.

Richard

Geoff you need to do a bit of research on wav and aiff, both are the same and actually come from amiga as far as i remember.

If you put a cd in a win machine and look at the files they will be wav, in a mac they will be seen as Aiff.

Gary

What I was really getting at is the tagging of WAV and AIFF clearly isn't the same since iTunes ignores WAV tags. 

BTW I was wondering does XBMC have a 'UPnP player' element in it that can be recognised by a network as a renderer that music can be streamed to via a control point. That would be an interesting option for streaming USB audio off a NAS via a Mac without iTunes involved.

Geoff

Could it just be that MS and Apple choose and use different file extensions?  Thus anything with .wav will be steadfastly ignored by Apple .  Suggesting that all one needs to do is change the extension to one Apple likes .  OK, a bit simplistic, but it is just a suggestion.

Richard

Gary, actually the common source of the files is the IFF standard developed by Electronic  Arts  around 1986/7.

This format introduced the concept of nested data chunks for audio files, otherwise quite common for data comms at the time.

This IFF format was primarily developed in tandem with Commodore. Commodore went under and later became Amiga.

However IFF format then separately developed in around 1987. Apple built its AIFF based on the IFF standard with its own extensions, and Microsft and IBM developed RIFF derived from the IFF standard again with its own extensions. The RIFF format is generally known as WAV today.

So we have Electrnic Arts and computer games to thank for this :-)

The big difference between WAV and AIFF is the endian encoding of the PCM samples and how meta data is encoded. The actual  structure is however largely similar thanks to the IFF heritage.

Finally an audio CD does not consist of WAV/aiff files. That can only exist on a CDROM which is a different format to Redbook Audio CD. Audio CD consists primarily of the TOC index and raw PCM data. There is no IFF structuring.

Simon

For what I can find from their docs and forums, XBMC has UPnP Server and UPnP "Client"/Control Point functions built-in. Thus it should be visible from any UPnP Control Point, but you know how theory develops in practice with these kind of things...

Also, as I don't remember what you use as a control point device, XBMC has web, iOS and Android "remotes".

Richard, I think there's some confusion here.

As Simon (and others) stated elsewhere, the WAV file format does support tagging. Many applications don't support tagging in WAV properly. I don't know why only parts of the standard seem to be generally supported. Other formats like MP3, AAC, FLAC, etc. -- along with their own tagging abilities -- are more fashionable these days and enjoy a better support of their specification.

If I understood the process correctly, in the Naim servers, the metadata and the musical information are stored separately. The latter is kept in WAV files (with no tagging) and the former, when fetched from Rovi, is stored in XML files. That's why, if your Music Store is on a NAS and you try to inspect the WAV files (better copy them first), they appear "anonymous".

Thus this MP3 story your dealer told you is not the way Naim servers handle metadata. It's the new functionality soon coming to the servers: a second pass to create additional MP3 files for mobile/car/whatever use.

HTH

Maurice

Xbmc has upnp built in and delivers far more sexy info on your music, its of course dependent on you having a home media centre solution as i do, and prefer.

If you prefer not to have that then xbmc probably is not an option.

Maurice, that is correct, the metadata chunks in the wav file format are not used by Naim in their rips. The data is stored in a seperate database.

Simon

WAV is a problematic format for many of us, as Simon and Maurice point out it does support tags, but many applications don't recognise them. Unsurprisingly in my opinion, this problem is mostly down to Microsoft who had to go its own way rather than follow the Amiga model and adopt IFF. Though I agree IBM are not entirely blameless as they pushed the PC on to the world.

Electronic Arts produced some wonderful programs and the Amiga remains my favourite home computer, it can do things in a few kilobytes that the likes of Microsoft require gigabytes to do. 

Commodore were not a great company to deal with and its customer support was not very good. However, the products it made were quite amazing - not least of which was the Amiga. It used the TripOS system developed at Cambridge University and an interface called Intuition developed by Metacomco in Bristol. It was a fully pre-emptive multitasking environment in 64k when Apple and Microsoft could only dream of such things. Even Acorn's superb Archimedes wasn't as advanced.  

Unfortunately, there is no Amiga web browser available that supports cascading style sheets or I'd still be using my Amiga. Yes it was a combination of MS and IBM that destroyed the Amiga's market as it became a games console. A few enthusiasts have kept Amiga alive, but it is never likely to bounce back. 

However, I too would have preferred Apple to have used FLAC rather than invent a proprietary system, but can understand why they prefer AIFF to WAV. Apple systems are far more open these days than MS being based on Darwin Unix, which is open source. The developer kit is also freely available. 

ALAC is now open source and is probably the best lossless format to use if you want to share music between iTunes, Squeezebox, Sonos, Naim and Linn - purely on compatibility reasons. Though not if you have Denon streamer. 

Over the years Apple support has been good and is one reason I'm happy to use its products. I'm far from happy with all its decisions ... no more support for PowerPC ... no more support for HyperCard ... no more support for first generation Intel ... but they have one great thing going for them: they are not Microsoft. 

Guy, WAV (RIFF) and AIFF are both based on IFF.  The RIFF format developed by IBM and MS from the IFF base supports EXIF constructs for its metdata, the same metadata used in professional digital imaging etc, whilst AIFF developed by Apple from the IFF base uses its own standard.

But yes in consumer land if you don't use MS windows or Linux reading WAV metadata is troublesome.   

Errata on my earlier post: Commodore developed the Amiga before going under and sold off.

PS I loved the Commodore 64, although by bothers raved about the Amiga it never did quite have the magic of the 64 to me... And of couse off topic.. The Spectrum for developing early 8 bit hardware samplers on its bus. Z80 machine code :-)

Simon

Seems there is always a little bit of good news along with the bad. Restoring all my music files from scratch has significantly sped up server-control point file indexing. Asset was running all the time the files were being loaded from my backup disc.

Seems to like the clean install probably helped, whereas before over time deletion and track movement between folders was a common happening.

Geoff

It is ID3v2, says Wiki, confirmed by looking inside an AIFF file with a text editor.

Geoff

You may have had some disk fragmentation and a clean install gets rid of that so do the occasional reinstall can be beneficial. Most computers seem to slow down over time even my Apple server, which apparently doesn't fragment, but .... well when I did a reinstall it seem to improve its performance dramatically. 

All the best, Guy 

I'm always happy to use Linux and to show it when MS did a demo at our office, 10 of us wore red hats; we offered the MS guy one, but he refused it ... even when you try to be nice to them ... oh well.

Yes Commodore developed the Amiga and it was originally called Lorraine during the Jack "Business Is War" Tramiel years. I think it was Gail Washington took over that it was re-christened Amiga. Jack of course bought an Atari (the company not the console) and out came a GEM of a system. Well to be honest, it was not very good under the bonet - though GEM was quite nice.

The C64 was a great little computer with its sprites - shame about the 1541 floppy disk though with its serial reads - slow or what. Ye olde BBC left it for dead. However, the C64 had SID and so its sound was excellent.

Never owned a Spectrum though did use a QL for a short while - very odd machine. 

The Amiga had Agnus (Blitter), Denise (Video), and Paula (Audio) to do the sound and vision and this made so much better than the IBM PC to use. 

So with Amiga OS 4.1 being a quite wonderful system and the Amiga X1000 now available albeit in short supply perhaps there is life in the old girl yet. Mine is on pre-order ... 

Maurice, your post intriqued me so I researched this... And its interesting that it appears the metadata issue with AIFF is not dissimilar with WAV between consumer and pro.

It appears the professional Apple AIFF format for metadata uses the Apple Loops extension tags. However software such as iTunes can't read this. Instead uses a subset of ID3 tags, which in turn can't always be read by other  software. Sound familiar? The AIFF standard version 1.3 only identifies approx 4 very limited metadata types and makes no mention of ID3 or Apple Loop  extensions. However because the format is RIFF like WAV anyone can create custom chunks. So it would appear regular metadata is not part of the AIFF standard but is part of optional and potentially incompatible extensions.

So it would appear if you use AIFF make sure you understand which tagging system you use (and if youse ID3 which chunk ID is used - this also appears inconsistent) , or ensure you use Mutiple tagging options for future software compatability. On developer forums you see challenges with iTunes AIFF tag interoperability for example.

Off to look at FLAC now, but I think that one is locked down...

Simon

Guy, interesting... Well I have learnt something new, I didn't know Amigas were still going...

I do remember GEM, I had a port on it on my Amstrad 1512. It was awful, but that 1512 (IBM PC semi clone) was fantastic and it allowed my to develop my structured programming  skills all those years ago using Borland Turbo Pasal... C+ wasn't yet around.. 

Any way GEM was so awful, I developed my own GUI for several projects at University. It was probably equally awful... But at least it was mine.. 

You mention the C64 sound.. Yes it was superb. Up until the C64 I had built and used a Nascom 2 (around 1980) and had played around withsound and computer audio using three chip variable waveform oscillators and attenuators. Sound was always very space invadery.. However the C64 introduced filters.. Wow the difference was immense... If only the C64 was powered by Z80. I loved Z80 assembler, I could never get my head around the 6502 / 6510. It was all so different 

Simon

OK Gurus

Here's one for you. ( I will probably try it and see). If you convert between lossless formats in dB Poweramp what happens to the tags?

I will bet if I convert a dB Poweramp Tagged WAV to AIFF i-tunes won't see any tags it understands. I also wonder what happens if I use XLD to convert FLAC ( or WAV) to AIFF or ALAC. I bet again the tags will not be translated.

This is not a criticism of these programs I would not expect them to be able to do that in all fairness.

Oh what a tangled web 

@Simon,

Ahem... Considering I was writing to you, I should have known better. You're right of course. I refrained from mentioning the pro usage of AIFF (where, for instance, the data can be MIDI instead of LPCM), just concentrating on one instance of the consumer version.

Guilty of patent laziness, Your Honour !

Interesting to see that, instead of achieving the goal of interchange, the IFF derivatives evolved into quasi-proprietary subformats where interoperability is more theory than practice...

As to FLAC, metadata comes in the form of Vorbis Comments, which have the powerful capability of being user-customizable. They come in the usual form of key-value pairs, but -- unlike ID3v2 tags that are part of the specification itself -- not only the value but also the key can be freely defined. This is a blessing and a curse, of course. Subsets have been agreed upon (not sure what "standardized" means in this case), and extensions proposed. Most applications only support some sort of "standard" subset (ARTIST, ALBUM, TITLE, etc.), and don't handle free keys. Moreover, keys are not required to be unique (multiple ARTIST tags for instance), which is another problem for many applications.

Fortunately FLAC is open source, and the implementation comes with handy command-line utilities like flac (encoder/decoder) and metaflac (tagging). Though not really user-friendly (except for old UNIX-diehards like I was) but they are scriptable, and they are the insurance that the information will be retrievable from the files as long as someone takes the pain to port FLAC to your preferred operating system.

All this makes FLAC the most powerful and best archiving format IMO. Which is why I'm p*ssed off when Phil tells us that the Naim servers new alternative encoding functionality is going to be restricted to MP3 only (although I perfectly understand that it is the best solution for nomadic use). Free the Naim rips !

Guilty of rambling again ! Have a nice saturday all,

Maurice

Geoff,

No dBPowerAmp guru here. As I'm a lazy guy, I use Max on Mac to rip and transcode. No problems with tagging so far when trancoding between FLAC, AIFF, ALAC, AAC or MP3, except with ALBUMARTIST but that must be a bug. But I'm a dilletante regarding ripping for the time being. Cannot comment on WAV.

Glad your silly misadventure ended for the best.

Maurice

dBpoweramp would write the Wave tags to the correct format for AIFF (id3v2), iTunes would see the tags.

Excellent news. This is why I love dB Poweramp.

Or you could use iTunes 

No offence.

Richard