I was asked to do a tutorial on embedding metadata tags into naim ripped wavs.
A few caveats.
- I have only ever done this with rips done on an NS02, I have no doubt therefore this will work with a UServe and an HDX set of rips, but I do not know how the newer platform works including core etc.
- By doing this yyou are adjusting the original ripped files, this is not a good thing if you are infact still running your HDX etc. Do this on a copy of your rips.
- If you are still using your server, the easy answer is to use it to convert your files to FLAC, which negates the need to do this.
With that out of the way why would you want to do this?
Well typically its because your server is failing or has failed or you have flogged it. Leaving you with a library of WAVs that you now realise are not seen by other server software. This is because naim use āside carā files to store relevant āMetadataā or āTagsā for these music files.
Metadata is simple strings of information stored typically within the files itself, or in the case of most wavs and naims implementation in a file that goes along side the music files. Please note, confusion typically comes from file names. File names is not metadata or tags. In reality all your files could be called untitled, but if the meta data is good, servers will pick it up.
Most other server software such as Roon, Audiovarna, various UPNP servers for nases etc cannot read naim side car files. Perhaps some can, but if its not the one you want then you need to adjust the wavs.
Another reason to want to do this is for the purpose of converting those WAVs. If your naim server is gone or dead, then you have a bunch of wavs you might want to be flacs. With no relevant metadata conversion software will struggle to make any sense of those files and you will land up with a mess.
What are we going to do?
Take the FILE NAME of the WAV files and extract from them relevant information to create metadata/tags for those files.
This will then allow other servers to pick those up, or allow you to then go onto convert those files into other formats.
How are we going to do it.
I cannot provide links but you need a piece of software call MP3TAG. Search for it in google it has its own website and its all rather basic and orange! Download and install. Sorry mac peoples this is so far as I can tell windows only.
For the sake of testing folks, I almost insist that you copy over one or two albums from the MQ folder of you naim back up.
Open MP3Tag
Drag the folder of music into the main window, youāll notice that there is no tags in the artist/album/track/name columns.
Select the files that have just been populated.
Goto: convert>File name to tag
Enter this string in the box:
%artist%%album%%dummy%%track% - %title%
PLEASE NOTE . For some reason back slashes are removed from this forum, so that string above is duplicated in the image below, it needs a back slash between the % of artist and album and between % of album and dummy, check the picture
Check under that box now that its picking things up correctly:
Click ok,
Youāll notice it now populates those columns with the correct data. Click the save button.
Now when you run another server over it, it should pick them up just fine. You can do multiple artists folders at a time, I went through my library by artist letter, I noticed MP3tag woul dcrash if you gave it too much at once, that being said a few suns have set since I used it in anger!