Formatting wav files downloaded, not ripped

[Zenzani]

Hi, I've been ripping CDs happily with DBPoweramp onto my computer in order to transfer to my Sony NW-A45 digital Walkman.
When I buy download albums and transfer the wav files to my player, they always show as Unknown Artist, rather than the actual artist.I can create CCs from the files and rip the "album" from that, but I'm trying to avoid having the CD in the first place!
Can I use DBPoweramp in any way to change this and make the files appear as a titled album under the artist name on my player?
Thanks

[Dat Ei]

Re: Formatting wav files downloaded, not ripped

Two ideasb

1st the wav files are not tagged. If so, you can tag them by hand.

2nd the Sony can't handle tagged wav files.

Whhich codec do you rip your CDs to?

Dat Ei

[schmidj]

Re: Formatting wav files downloaded, not ripped

Question? Are the files you are downloading actually .wav files? Most downloads that are available are mp3 or m4a, or (often at a greater cost) lossless FLAC files.

Your files are either lacking metadata tags or contain metadata stored in a manner that your player doesn't recognize it. In the case of .wav files, metadata has never been standardized (Microsoft drew up the specs for .wav files before the need for metadata was recognized; various parties have chosen to add metadata to them using different "standards", and not all players will recognize the metadata.)

There are numerous ways to add metadata tags to audio files. With dBpoweramp, at least in Windows, if you right click on a file you should have an option to edit the tags, which will allow you to add the missing title, artist, etc. A free program, mp3tag is another popular tagger (it works with most any audio file format, including .wav) Mp3tag also includes a "convert" function which may be able to automatically fill in the title and artist if that information was part of the filename of the downloaded file. I believe that Foobar, a popular and well regarded player also has tagging options.