During Conversion I'm losing Metadata

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Digital-g
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Feb 12, 2020 12:56 pm

During Conversion I'm losing Metadata

Post by Digital-g »

Goldwave: v6.47 (Latest as of February 12 2020)
Windows 10

So I'm changing cars (to a 2013 Cadillac SRX) and it wants the media files to have meta-tags. This is new to me - I haven't really had to worry about tagging my music before.

So I have a library of 4000+ music files in WAV format. I've tagged these files (with basic tag data) and added album artwork. Works great UNTIL... I convert these files to MP3 - the car really wants MP3 files as it seemed to choke on the WAV files. When I use the Goldwave batch command to convert the files from WAV to MP3 (320) some of the meta data is getting lost, specifically the track number and album artist.

When the track number is lost the songs are listed in alphabetical order, instead of by track number. Not good.

Any help?

Thanks,
DougDbug
Posts: 2172
Joined: Wed Feb 16, 2005 3:33 pm
Location: Silicon Valley

Re: During Conversion I'm losing Metadata

Post by DougDbug »

That could be tricky -

Tagging for WAV files is not well-standardized or widely supported, and different formats have different tagging fields & formats so you may not get a 1:1 translation.

You might try TAudioConverter or dBpoweramp.

TAudioConverter* is my go-to tool when I just need to convert without any editing. Once you're set-up with the output format and destination it's just drag, drop, and go, and you can drop-in multiple files/folders. But, I've never been in a situation where I was trying to preserve the tags so I don't know how well it will work.

The free version of dBpoweramp didn't used to support MP3 but now that the MP3 patents have expired that's probably no-longer true.

There is also a program called MP3tag. It's got an automatic tagging feature where it goes online to find the information. I've never tried that but I do use MP3tag a lot and you can select a whole folder at once (i.e. artist or album) and fill-in all of the common information in one-shot.

Worst case, 4000 songs is probably something like 400 albums and you could easily do 10 or 20, or more every evening (etc.) and that's manageable. If you are going to search-for or scan the album art it will take a little longer (if you don't have it already).

Or if you still have the CDs you can re-rip them to MP3 and let your ripping program tag them automatically.
This is new to me - I haven't really had to worry about tagging my music before.
Virtually all music player software relies on tags and the physical file/folder organization isn't that important. And for example, So, you can search/select your music by artist, title, album genre, year**, etc.




* I sometimes get a "missing DLL" error when starting TAudioConverter, and sometimes more than once (maybe related to the number of CPU cores on the system) but I just click "OK" and it works.

** I actually went-through my music collection and researched & correct the year information with the original year (for the ones I could find). By default when you rip, you'll usually get the year of the CD release even if was originally on vinyl, or you'll get the same year for all of the songs on a compilation or greatest hits CD.
Digital-g
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Feb 12, 2020 12:56 pm

Re: During Conversion I'm losing Metadata

Post by Digital-g »

Thank you for your reply.

I am currently using MP3Tag to tag the WAV files. I was hoping to use Flac or another lossless format, but WAV seems to be the one that works in the house AND in the cars, but I realize it's not the most universal format.

No way am I re-ripping the CD's I've already done. :shock: That's why I made an effort to rip them to a lossless format. Converting them to MP3 is easy enough (using Goldwave) just wish I wasn't losing the tags in the process.

I'll definitely look at the software you listed for conversion though. Thanks again.
donrandall
Posts: 550
Joined: Wed Dec 01, 2004 11:06 pm
Location: Denver, Colorado

Re: During Conversion I'm losing Metadata

Post by donrandall »

Some CDs do no have the tags the same format as others. The way they should be arranged is: Artist - Title. mp3 .
Example: Mario Lanza - Devil Went Down To Boise.mp3

I use the Nightingale mp3 app to play tunes on this Windows 10 computer... and it features a very user friendly tagging utility.

https://getnightingale.com/all-versions.php
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