Converting WAV to FLAC

[gsusser]

Hi, first time user here. I'm hoping to convert 20,000 WAV files to FLAC if it's not too painful. I've run into a problem though in testing/trying to convert my first album. I can't select the album to convert -- I select the files or tracks. So there is no information in the tag regarding the album it's from. I must be overlooking something, but can't figure it out. Thanks for any help.

glenn

[Spoon]

Re: Converting WAV to FLAC

Your wave files possibly do not have id tags.

[gsusser]

Re: Converting WAV to FLAC

Perhaps I didn't explain what happened correctly. The songs were tagged properly by dBpower (though I'm not sure how tags work with WAVs) but did not include album info. The converter program doesn't give the option to convert an album, only the songs in the album. Perhaps that's why there's no album info in the tag? I hope that's clear.

[gsusser]

Re: Converting WAV to FLAC

Hi, can I get a response to this? Otherwise the program is useless to me. Thanks.

[gsusser]

Re: Converting WAV to FLAC

I have to tell you, I'm very disappointed with the support and lack of customer service. It's a shame you place so little emphasis on these qualities. Then again, I'm grateful I found this out before I purchased the program. I'm off to try EAC.

[Spoon]

Re: Converting WAV to FLAC

A little bit impatient, if you ask me, problems, especially unique ones take time ot solve.

[LtData]

Re: Converting WAV to FLAC

What exactly do you mean "no album info"?

[gsusser]

Re: Converting WAV to FLAC

Spoon, a simple comment like "I'm working on it," would've led me to believe I wasn't simply being ignored, which is what I think/thought. And I really don't think you understand the problem, perhaps because I haven't explained it correctly. The comment by LtData is an indication of that, which as I said, may be the result of my not communicating properly.

Guys, your software came highly recommended and I'm trying.

What exactly do you mean "no album info"?

Thanks for the concern. I'll try to be specific as possible. When going to open an album that I have stored on my PC as WAV files, the software asks where to "Look in." I select the album and the tracks appear in the large box below. I then select all the tracks, click open, and am brought to the converter screen. I have FLAC selected in the "Converting To" box, and to the right of that it says converting 14 files. I then select "convert" and the conversion process begins.

When finished, the tracks are successfully converted to FLAC and all the tag info except the album is there when I bring it up in MediaMonkey or MusicMatch.

In any event, I have a lot of albums I want to convert and my fear is that I am going to lose the album info for the individual tracks. Ideally, I'd like to just click on open an album and convert to FLAC and have it save the tracks with the album as the directory... this is how all the burning programs work.

Hopefully, I made that clear. If not, please let me know. Thank you.

[LtData]

Re: Converting WAV to FLAC

So your problem is that your converted FLAC files have all of the tag data except the album name, correct? When you right-click on the WAV files and click "Edit Tag", does the album name show up there? What about when you do this on the FLAC files?

[gsusser]

Re: Converting WAV to FLAC

Correct about the missing album name. I'm also concerned about maintaining organization. I have my hard disk organized by artist: D:\a\artist\album\track. [a stands for artist name -- there are 26 directories for each letter in the alphabet.] I haven't tried to use the batch conversion option yet, but if I do, will I be able to maintain my directory structure? I'm concerned about the missing album info because I'm afraid my files might get categorized something like this: D:\a\track.

I never knew about right clicking and edit tag. Oddly enough, for both the WAV and FLAC files, no tag info is there when I do that. But MM and MMJB will give me the tag info I want, which is album, artist and track. So I'm confused.

[LtData]

Re: Converting WAV to FLAC

For PowerPack or free, your only conversion directory options are to keep the converted files in their original folders or dump everything into one folder. dBpoweramp Reference includes "Dynamic Naming", which allows you to keep the entire path, as you mentioned.

Aha, that is the culprit. MMJB uses non-standard WAV tags (ID3 I believe), so dMC cannot read your tag data. Can MMJB convert your WAV files to another format, such as WMA Lossless?

[gsusser]

Re: Converting WAV to FLAC

I never realized that MMJB was gonna cause all these problems, Most of my cds were transferred using MMJB. I'm in the process of switching to MediaMonkey and am having some issues scanning the MMJB WAVs into their library. They're (MM) working on it and helping me. I'm quite sure that MMJB cannot convert files though I'm not positive. I don't know about MM. But this is why I've turned to dbPowerarmp, to get it done right hopefully.

Do I understand you correctly that dbPoweramp won't be able to do the job easily? Same with any other program? Do you have a suggestion? Thanks.

[LtData]

Re: Converting WAV to FLAC

I'm not sure if it will help, but a tagging utility, "Tag & Rename", supports MMJB-style WAV tagging: http://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm. You might be able to export your file's tag data and then import it and apply it to your FLAC files, but I have no idea how this would be done. You might want to ask them how it could be done.