Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[macdonjh]

I generally convert my files to .flac when I sync them onto one of my DAPs or an SD card.  Those files almost always get transferred with the tag information intact (cover art, artist, album, track name, etc.)  When I forget, and sync .wav files, the tag information generally gets lost.  My DAPs don't typically display cover art, only have the actual filename available, don't have the album name, etc.

Is it just a property of .wav that tag information doesn't transfer well?

[wer]

Correct. WAV has very limited tagging support, compared to FLAC or MP3.

[RoderickGI]

I saw in your other recent post that your Media Library is mostly WAV, but you convert to FLAC for some portable devices.

Did you know that WAV and FLAC files just contain the same lossless PCM data? In FLAC files it is almost always compressed, and in WAV files it is almost always uncompressed. But that is the only difference. It plays identically. But FLAC includes all the tags. Of course, if you were to convert to using FLAC for all media, all your devices would have to support FLAC playback. But moving to FLAC makes a lot of sense, from a library management point of view. The sound is the same. Okay, some will dispute that, but usually that seems to come down to the player and volume level differences.

[macdonjh]

I did not know .flac is simply compressed .wav data.

Thank you for confirming my observations about metadata and .wav files.  I thought maybe I was seeing things.

[wer]

My friend Rod is being a little too dainty...   

The sound is the same.

This is a fact.

Okay, some will dispute that...

In the same way that nowadays, some people will dispute lots of things that are demonstrably true, if those things differ from what they want.

FLAC contains mathematically identical PCM waveform data as WAV.  The sound is the same.  Feel free to use it whenever you can, as it will save you disk space and headaches. Some things, most notoriously iTunes, don't support it, but it's an excellent storage format.

[RoderickGI]

Dainty! 

But I agree with the rest.