How To Embed Album Art In Ripped WAV Files?

[Wickedfox]

In dbpoweramp control center I have tagging set to ID3, yet when I rip a album and play it through windows media player, the album art doesn't come up. Does WMP not read those tags or am I missing something? I also have the tag album art selected in the CDGrab tagging settings. Im gonna put the files on a DAP / Mp3 player (Hiby R4) and I want to know if it'll show up or not before going through and ripping everything and transferring everything over

[Wickedfox]

Im on Windows 11 by the way

[Spoon]

Only a few programs will read ID3v2 tags from wave files, WMP is not one of them, so in short WMP cannot read album art from any wave file.

[Wickedfox]

Only a few programs will read ID3v2 tags from wave files, WMP is not one of them, so in short WMP cannot read album art from any wave file.

Your right. VLC media player can read it though. Having ID3 album art enabled won't effect sound quality right?

[Spoon]

No

[Dat Ei]

Is there a special reason why you use WAV files and not flac files? Flac files have the same audio quality (lossless) as WAV files, but have advantages concerning metadata or integrity check.


Dat Ei

[Wickedfox]

Is there a special reason why you use WAV files and not flac files? Flac files have the same audio quality (lossless) as WAV files, but have advantages concerning metadata or integrity check.


Dat Ei

Call me crazy, but I think wav files sound better. Plus the KBPS on wav is higher than flac. Wav is also the industry standard so I just go with it. I have a 2tb micro sd card for my player with over 2,000 wav files and it's not even near filled up. Everyone has their preference and mine is wav.

[GBrown]

Call me crazy, but I think wav files sound better. Plus the KBPS on wav is higher than flac. Wav is also the industry standard so I just go with it. I have a 2tb micro sd card for my player with over 2,000 wav files and it's not even near filled up. Everyone has their preference and mine is wav.

OK stick with wav. But it is much more limited with the metadata and album art compatibility, and many players do not support this. But for the record, any lossless format like FLAC or ALAC is bit-for-bit identical to wav when they are decoded, hence the term lossless. Any difference you perceive is likely just that.

[Dat Ei]

Hey WickedFox,

Call me crazy, but I think wav files sound better. Plus the KBPS on wav is higher than flac.

ok, it's not my business to convince you. WAV and flac are both lossless codecs. You can convert WAV to FLAC and vice versa as often as you like and get the same result bit for bit every time. While flac is able to use a lossless compression (like zip) to gain smaller file sizes, both codecs have the same information, audio data, sample rate and bit depth within.

Wav is also the industry standard so I just go with it.

WAV is an very old standard from the beginning of the 1990s. FLAC is from the early 2000s and has several advantages in comparison to WAV, like the lossless compression, the metadata handling or the audio data checksums within the files to check the integrity of files. As said before the correct playback of WAV files with metadata within depends on the player software itself. Some player reproduce clicking sounds, cause they can't handle metadata within WAV files, some can show the album art some can not, some can show the correct metadata and some can not...

But you do you... Good luck!


Dat Ei

[Wickedfox]

Hey WickedFox,



ok, it's not my business to convince you. WAV and flac are both lossless codecs. You can convert WAV to FLAC and vice versa as often as you like and get the same result bit for bit every time. While flac is able to use a lossless compression (like zip) to gain smaller file sizes, both codecs have the same information, audio data, sample rate and bit depth within.



WAV is an very old standard from the beginning of the 1990s. FLAC is from the early 2000s and has several advantages in comparison to WAV, like the lossless compression, the metadata handling or the audio data checksums within the files to check the integrity of files. As said before the correct playback of WAV files with metadata within depends on the player software itself. Some player reproduce clicking sounds, cause they can't handle metadata within WAV files, some can show the album art some can not, some can show the correct metadata and some can not...

But you do you... Good luck!


Dat Ei

Here's what im using to listen to music: https://store.hiby.com/products/hiby...PBfSLux0Vz4Mdl

Haven't noticed any clicking noises in the middle of songs so far

[Wickedfox]

And by clicking sounds, what do you mean? Do you have an example file? Will the clicking be consistent through the song or will it just be clicking and no music? Now your gonna make me wanna turn the option off and re-rip some albums again.

[Dat Ei]

The clicking sounds or distortions are not part of the audio data, but caused by the inability of some audio players to handle WAV files with metadata correctly. So this problem is not a matter of the audio file itself, but the audio player.

Especially for a mobile device I would recommend flac instead of wav, if the player can play flac, because the size of flac files are smaller than wav files, but have the same audio quality.


Dat Ei

[Kristy7]

Hey WickedFox,

Some player reproduce clicking sounds, cause they can't handle metadata within WAV files, some can show the album art some can not, some can show the correct metadata and some can not...

But you do you... Good luck!


Dat Ei

would AIFF be a viable alternative? My understanding is that AIFF is basically the standard uncompressed format (like WAV) but was designed to handle ID3 tags and artwork much better natively.

Or does AIFF suffer from the same "clicking" compatibility issues on non-Apple players that Dat Ei mentioned regarding tagged WAVs? I know the HiBy R4 supports AIFF, but I'm curious if the metadata implementation is safer than the "hack" used for WAV tags.

[Dat Ei]

Hey Kristy,

I have the impression that you mix up the different kinds and forms of compression.

1.) Audio compression

This is a lossy form of compression which tries to reduce the file sizes by trying to reduce and simplify the audio information without noticeable, hearable effects. This methodes (like i.e. mp3) lead to a permanent oss of audiio quality.

2.) Data compression

This is a lossless form of compress like we know i.e. in form of zip or tar. This is the kind of compression flac uses. Flac offers different compression rates from uncompressed to maximum compressed. While the audio quality is always the same, the resulting file sizes vary. You can convert flac files back and forth to different compression rates or wav or aiff or alac as often as you want without a loss of audio quality. But be aware that you might get in trouble with the metadata (i.e. loss of information).

I can only recomend to choose a lossless codec which can handle metadata well, is as open as possible and is supported by one's player. For me flac is the way to go, especialy because flac offers smaller file sizes and an integrity check on top.

Dat Ei