WAV Conundrum

Recently I filled a 1tb external drive so I bought a larger drive and copied the files over, 95% are WAV ripped from CD, the balance are mp3 and Hi-Res. I use Creative MediaSource Organizer and created a new Music Library for the new drive and imported the tracks. The problem is only metadata for the mp3 shows up, none for the WAV files. When I switch back to the old drive everything is there.

My question is if the data is stored in the file why don't I see the tags? If its not stored in the file why doesn't the app recognize it? (Same app, same files, just different drive). I called Creative and they weren't sure, my Creative Organizer is from 2007, so its old. (I've tried Foobar but it doesn't recognize the tags either and the freeDB is always wrong for tagging). Is there anyway any other software can see these tags? (Wherever they are residing?) Any help appreciated, Cheers !!!

 

WAV files ripped from CD generally don't contain any metadata. If you convert them to FLAC or ALAC, you can embed tags and cover art.

My guess is that your music program is using a library file--a database, really--that contains the tags associated with each WAV file, and perhaps maps the data to each file based on the location of the folders where the WAV tracks are contained. If you move the tracks, then the associations with the tags are broken.

 

Are the drive letter and directories exactly the same on the new drive?

 

To second Billy Budapest's post: WAV files don't contain metadata (although some people use the folder structure and file naming conventions to store some metadata but it's not part of the files themselves). In addition to being able to store the metadata, converting the WAV files to FLAC or ALAC will also reduce the size of the file without any loss of sound quality, which is an advantage in some situations (such as using them on a portable player).

 

Because the standard for tagging WAV files is inconsistent many library software keep this information in a separate database as is the case with your Creative application. The database has pointers to the files and you no longer see the tags because your new drive has a new drive letter. For this to work you'd need to find the database file, copy it and rename the old one for safekeeping, then edit the contents of the database to change all "C:\" to whatever is the letter assigned to your new drive. Depending on the database format this might be impossible.

Alternatively, if your music is in ARTIST\ALBUM folders by TRACK-TITLE your application can import the new files using these values as tags. You'd want to start with a blank database and then perform the import. There is likely a step before the import begins where you map the available variables to how you would like the tags to appear. You can only get tags for values you have in the file structure so likely YEAR and GENRE will remain missing. After you've done the import there may be a way to backfill these things.

More info: http://support.creative.com/kb/ShowArticle.aspx?sid=2528

Proceed with caution as I am not familiar with your exact application and am providing guidance based on similar situations I've faced in the past.

 

Nope, the old drive was X: and the new is Y:, maybe if I remap the new as X: it will work?

 

Possibly.
My guess is that the music organizing software you're using has an internal database that is keeping the tag info. If the drive letter changes then that breaks the link to the tag data that's in the database.

 

All of the WAV's show up as "Artist-Album-Song.wav" as the file name. Problem is when I go to the import stage where I can set the file convention, only the few mp3's show. However when I actually import, the wav's also get imported but only display when I select "all artists" and "all albums". Then they display in the "Artist-Album-Song.wav" format in alphabetical order under "(Song)Title" (the columns with track number, artist, album, are not populated). I reckon, as you mentioned, finding this database file is the key.

 

This was a good idea. Did you try it?

 

It's also possible that the Creative music management software is also identifying the drive and file locations by the drive's volume name in addition to the drive's drive letter. So just changing the drive to be the same drive letter may not be enough. Try changing the volume name of the drive to be the same as the old drive.

However, what I'd suggest would be to investigate how to have the Creative music management software convert your files to FLAC and embed the correct tags. Plug in the old drive that the Creative software recognizes. And figure out how to convert the WAV files to FLAC and have the tagging info get embedded in the FLAC files. I assume the Creative software supports converting to FLAC.

 

Not yet, I'd like to find a solution where I can keep both drives.

 

Unfortunately it does not support FLAC, previously I have used Foobar to convert FLAC to WAV for the Creative app. Another drawback is that the software cannot scan an existing file for the tag info using Gracenote, it only does that when ripping.

 

What about WMA Lossless?
WMA Lossless is different than regular WMA. Regular WMA is a lossy format (like AAC or MP3). WMA Lossless is lossless and supports embedded tags, and Windows knows how to read those tags.

The goal is to get the tagging info in the files themselves instead of just the Creative database file. That's a more robust way to store the tagging info because then other programs (like Foobar) will also be able to read the tags.

 

My Creative app supports WMA but it doesnt specify if its lossless or not. The problem however is won't I still have to re-rip all my CD's in order to get that tagging info in the WMA file itself? If I move to new software I reckon I may have to re-rip also unless the software can scan the existing files and embed the tags. I really prefer to not have to re-rip thousands of cd's, especially when I have all my music backed up on three drives now.

 

Does the Creative software support a way to convert from WAV to WMA? Hopefully if it does it is also smart enough to write the tagging info into the WMA files at the same time. And hopefully it also has a way to specify WMA Lossless instead of the lossy version of WMA.

 

I rip my cd's to wav with JRiver and get the covers and tags.
If it doesn't show right away there's an option to look up the tags on an online base.

 

Is there a reason you must use that particular software? Is it to transfer or stream music to a Creative device? If not, I'd recommend a batter music manager that can handle Lossless codecs that support tagging such as ALAC or FLAC.

 

I've just always used Creative, problem tho is switching to different software and losing the tags, so I'm sort of stuck with it unless I want to re-rip thousands of CD's. I tried to switch to Foobar two years ago but the tags were not there so just stuck with what I had.

 

JRiver is adding tags and cover art but it is not being stored in the WAV files and, therefore, is not likely to be available to you if/when you use a player other than JRiver.

 

I might try that eventually, however I'd still have to re-tag my existing files. What database does JRiver use? Foobar's is always wrong.

 

People always ask, "Why not rip to WAV? My artist and title info shows up." Not trying to be a butthole but I've always said that because stuff like this happens.

Can you organize and group by the date/time that you imported?

 

You wouldn't have to manually retag them,JRiver would do that.$50,30 day free trial,it's worth a try.

 

I second using JRiver, well worth the price. Why WAV and not AIFF, never a problem with metadata. WAV and AIFF both have the same size file.

 

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As luck would have it Pono uses JRiver software so I'm able to play my wav files on both.Something would have to be real good to get me away from JRiver.

 

I actually started ripping to earlier Creative software probably 15 years ago, there weren't many choices back then, even the version I'm using now doesn't have FLAC. I don't think I can organize by date/time, the default seems to be alphabetical.