A few months ago I had a question about Uniti Star and gaps in ripped Cd’s I decided not to get one, and the Core is expensive as I haven’t got thousands of cds to rip. When I finshed ripping the core would just sit the holding a USB drive. I bought an atom, which sound great. When I rip using accurate rip to flac all the metadata and album cover is visible in the Atom screen, but when I rip to a wav file the metadata isn’t complete, and no albun cover. Can anyone solve this for me? I slightly prefer the sound of wav files
Wav files don’t hold metadata or cover art, so using flac is best.
The way around that would be to use appropriate upnp software which can pick up eg folder.jpg as cover art, and store its own db of meta data. Such as jriver media center. However jmc can also serve wav on the fly converting from a flac, so you don’t need to rip in wav.
Does your last comment mean you could or couldn’t hear a difference? In many machines flac and wav are indistinguishable audibly. I thought it was only with the first gen Naim streamers that people found a difference, due to the very limited RAM and/or processor capability causing unpacking yo interfere with playing.
I still believe WAV have something about them re SQ, although I appreciate that gap has perhaps lessened with the current generation of streamers…however, this is all a separate subject that has been covered and debated over and er, over…!
Re the subject at hand, if you did want to stick with WAV, then most capable tagging software will allow you to embed the relevant metadata in ID3 form on the WAV files – it’s something of an old adage that WAV doesn’t or cannot carry metadata….Metadatics is one such good choice on Macs……SongKong is another (and multi platform) and also provides a fairly automatic process if you desired (incl embedding artwork into the files, although I prefer to keep artwork as a separate file in the folder, which is also a selectable preference option), simply pointing the software at the folder of files to be tagged……
Bear in mind, if you are using the Naim App for control, you will still experience some info display issues, even with files that are populated with extensive metadata fields…the Naim App just ignores the majority of them or at best doesn’t display correctly……
If you use Asset as your upnp server, you can set it to transcode to WAV on the fly. This gives the advantages of FLAC - smaller size and easier metadata handling - with potential sound benefits of WAV.
You can rip to FLAC level 0 in dbpoweramp; there is no compression and so no unpacking to be done. It’s effectively WAV in a FLAC wrapper that holds the metadata.
FLAC level 0 is still compressed, just at the lowest level. There is also an Uncompressed level if you want it, which I believe is unique to DBpoweramp, but odd though it may seem, level 0 is not it.
Thanks for thoughtful reply, I use a windows pc so will check out SongKong. so far I’ve been using MP3tag which works well for flac, but not so good for wav
I do use the Naim app, I don’t find it brilliant, there doesn’t seem to be a shuffle function
FLAC is designed to be a low workload for the processor that unpacks it for playback, keeping electrical noise low where it matters most. The hard work is in the compression, so choosing a higher level can take longer. Not usually a problem on modern hardware, but a little slower if you are ripping multiple CDs.
As I understand it, it makes no difference how much you compress flac. I’ve even heard that the more compression the better. All my rips are done at the standard level 5.
Agree, as I understand it, FLAC has to go thru the same unpacking stage no matter what compression level, even the ‘uncompressed’ level.
An audio OCD buddy has spent a lot of time comparing FLAC comp levels and eventually concluded no difference.