wav tag difficulties

[anthonydddd]

I'm having several problems using tags with wav files. All of them were ripped using dBpoweramp reference in Vista. Any advice anyone can offer here would be greatly appreciated.

First, it isn't clear to me how or with what tool to edit all the fields of a tag once it has been written. Right clicking on the file and using using "Edit ID-tag" does not allow access to all the fields, even when data for those fields does already exist. For instance, the "disk #" and the "Album Artist" fields appear to be inaccessible from this window, even when the information was clearly already used by dBpoweramp to name the files in the first place. I attempted to use Tag & Rename to make changes to these fields, but as another user recently pointed out the method used by dBpoweramp to tag wav files is incompatible with the method used by Tag & Rename. How does one go about editting and using the updated contents of this information?

Second, I use MediaMonkey 3.0 to organize my music, and while many of the tags are handled correctly when I import them to MediaMonkey, a significant number of them are not. One important example is the tracks that have multiple artists. MediaMonkey uses a semi-colon to seperate multiple artists, but when the tags are read from tracks ripped with dBpoweramp the sepration is just ignored. For instance, tracks that should have the artists "Santana; Everlast" or "Santana; Lauryn Hill; Cee-Lo" are interpreted as "SantanaEverlast" and "SantanaLauryn HillCee-Lo" respectively. For testing purpose I converted some files to FLAC and mp3 formats to see if the tags were read correctly. The FLAC files were interpreted using only the last artist (ie. "Santana; Everlast" became "Everlast"), and the mp3 tags were read correctly. Does anyone know of a work-around for this problem?

Lastly, the details view in Windows Explorer doesn't seem to display any of the tag information. I am using Windows Vista, and realize that extra collumns can not be added by third-party software, but should the collumns such as "Artist" that are already present reflect the information in the tags?

Sorry for the long questions, and thanks in advance for any help anyone can provide.

[Spoon]

Re: wav tag difficulties

Windows will not read wave tags.

Is Tag and Rename's wav tagging method compatible with Media Monkey?

[anthonydddd]

Re: wav tag difficulties

No actually, and thank you for pointing that out. I had been experimenting with different methods to edit the tags in an attempt to understand why some of the fields are not being understood properly by MediaMonkey, but because Tag and Rename didn't work with dBpoweramp I never made it to the next step to see if Tag and Rename would work with MediaMonkey.

Still, MediaMonkey does not even appear to be reading the "Album Artist" field correctly when it is written by dBpoweramp - it simply copies the "Artist" field. Because dBpoweramp's "Edit ID-tag" is not allowing me to edit the "Album Artist" field either, these 2 problems together have left me with no way at all to edit this field after it has been assigned during the ripping process.

[Spoon]

Re: wav tag difficulties

Wave list tags (which dbpoweramp uses) are quite limited, pretty much only id3v1 fields are supported. You are perhaps better using a lossless codec, such as FLAC, or Wavpack.

[anthonydddd]

Re: wav tag difficulties

Sorry to persist with my questions, but I would like to be sure I understand.

Are you saying there is no way to change the "Artist Album" tags for wav files written by dBpoweramp?

Also, like I mentioned in my first post, even when using FLAC codec all the tags written by dBpoweramp for tracks with multiple artists (or composers for that matter) are being misread by both MediaMonkey and Tag & Rename. Is there no way to address this problem? It seems to me that the identifier being used by dBpoweramp to seperate artists is something other than a simple semi-colon.

[Spoon]

Re: wav tag difficulties

Not when using Wave files.

You have found bugs in oth T & R and MediaMonkey. When there are multiple artists, vorbis comments (which are used for FLAC), state they sould be saved as:

ARTIST=artist1
ARTIST=artist2

These programs are not correctly reading the 2nd artist line, write an email to the authors...

[arthurb]

Re: wav tag difficulties

I don't know if this thread is so dead as to remain unseen, but here goes...

Spoon, is there anywhere on this site a definitive list of the tags that are supported by dBpa in Wave files? Please understand that I am not complaining about a lack of support (although Album Artist would have been really useful, especially for Classical stuff), just that I would like to know - experimentation could become somewhat lengthy and error-prone.

By the by, I have found commonality between dBpa and Media Monkey with .wav tags; MM seems to read your tags just fine.

Thanks for any help.

[Spoon]

Re: wav tag difficulties

Shortly we will be adding a 2nd tag to wav files, based on ID3v2, it is the unofficial 2nd standard so we will implment it as well, that would be able to have album artist (as band, which seems the standard for id3v2), also album art will be supported.

[arthurb]

Re: wav tag difficulties

Thanks Spoon,
all extras are welcome, I hope Media Monkey will still be compatible - I'll have to talk to them I guess. I take it there is no definitive list of .wav tags then? Time for experiment... dig out the Hex Editor again...

Regards
Arthur.

[Spoon]

Re: wav tag difficulties

There is no album artist in wave list tags.

[skohlmey]

Re: wav tag difficulties

I am another person enjoying the fun of tagging wav files. (yes, I understand other lossless format might be easier - but wav files are the only lossless format my high-end music system will decode and play)

I have a 8000 wav files added to my library over the years ripped mostly by various versions of MusicMatch (using v10). I want to dump MM. In this clean up process I apparently need to retag my wav files so other players can read them. I found that dMC will not tag these older wav files. It doesn't complain or return an error - it just doesn't seem to do anything. I have verified this behavior with the GUI program and with a VB script. However, dMC will tag the files if I "convert" the file first. In other words, if I convert an older wav into a new wav file, then dMC will enable me to edit and save the tags. I am curious why this is? I would prefer not to have to convert all my older wav files, but I might end up do just that. What else don't I understand about tagging wav files?

Thanks

[Spoon]

Re: wav tag difficulties

Early versions of MM jst wrote an I3 tag to the file, not even in the wave structure, which is not correct (a bit like me tacking a Bitmap image to the end of a word document, just silly).

[skohlmey]

Re: wav tag difficulties

Spoon -- I really appreciate your help and I understand that MM used a risky, non-standard technique to tag wav files. I am more curious why that prevents dMC from adding proper tags to an old file now and why dMC doesn't provide an error when it fails?

Do you recommend that I convert my old MM wav files to a "new" wav file using dMC and add the tags as part of the process? Or is there an faster way that does not involve converting the file?

Thanks again!

[Spoon]

Re: wav tag difficulties

Because the wave files are effectively corrupted, in R13 I am about to improve that area so it would work around them, if you can send one such wave file to:

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/email.htm

[skohlmey]

Re: wav tag difficulties

An example wav file should be in your mailbox.