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[velvet ear]

I have an extensive collection of WAV files in MusicMatch.  Since they were acquired by Yahoo I am looking for an alternative method of mananging my CD collection, burning CD's as WAV etc.  Does Media Center import the MusicMatch Super tagging information that is associated with the WAV files?  Does anyone have experience don this?

[Matt]

WAV files don't support tags, so it's tricky.

I'd recommend you look at lossless compression.  APE or FLAC.  Bit-perfect data, full tagging, and data integrity tools. (built in MD5 / CRCs)

[velvet ear]

Thanks for your reply... but
Yes I understand that the WAV file format does not support tagging. 

I was refering to the MusicMatch feature called "Supper Tagging".  This related tag like information to WAV files.

In addition, I do not wish to compress my files since I hear a drop in fidelity when played on my stereo system.

[Matt]

In addition, I do not wish to compress my files since I hear a drop in fidelity when played on my stereo system.

Research lossless compression.  It's like ZIP for your audio.  No data is lost.

MusicMatch data

You could put the data in the filename (using MusicMatch) and then pick it up in Media Center. 

You could also build an XML file (MPL) and import that with Media Center.  It's some leg work, and I'm not sure if MusicMatch would have the tools to export the data or not.

[JimH]

I have an extensive collection of WAV files in MusicMatch. 

You can get exactly the same sound if your music is encoded in any lossless format.  APE, FLAC, Windows Media Lossless, Apple lossless.  You'll get exactly what you have with WAV but with half the disk space and real tagging.

[jack wallstreet]

I am a recent convert from many years with Musicmatch (from MM6 through MM10) to MC12.  I have an extensive library (mp3).  I will tell you that MC12 is generally better as a library manager than MM.  Its tagging features, while they operate a bit differently than MM are at least as good as supertagging in MM10, once you get to know MC12.  In general, after a learning curve, MC 12 is one heck of a program.

MM10 uses an Access accessible relational database.  If you know what you are doing, you may be able to convert the MM library to something readable by MC12 (see previous posts).  MM10 (when it worked) also stored the info in the music files as tags (for the most part), but WAVs don't have tags so you have to try to get the info from the library and not the invididual files.  One unlikely option is to convert the files to a different format within music match to get the tags stored in the files (if MM10 will do this - I had some consistency prolems) and then MC12 will read those tags and create a library.  This may not be what you want to do.

[hit_ny]

What are the library export options MM allows and in what format ?

[jack wallstreet]

Well, I don't think MM allows export of the library at all.  That's partly why the convoluted discussion here.  When you convert you either have to read the tags from the files or you (seemingly) have to do some programming to get at the MM Access database.  When I converted to MC12, I just made sure my tags were current and read my files into MC12 to instantly create the MC12 library.

[Alex B]

Actually MMJB saves the tags to wave files. It adds ID3v2.3 tags to the end of the files, which is proprietary. Very few programs can read ID3v2 tags that are added to a wave container file. Here is a thread at Hydrogen Audio where I tried to help a former "MMJB & wav" user and made a few suggestions: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=54765

I think there are a few options for getting the tags into MC12:

1.
- Use MC's "Fill Properties From Filename" tool and try to get the info from the filenames and directory paths.
- If the filenames do not contain all basic track info use the "supertagger" tool in MMJB for renaming the files.
- Create saved m3u playlists for additional info like Genre and Preference and import the playlists to MC. Later on you can mass tag the playlists files in the "Imported Playlists" playlists group.

2.
- Convert the files to MP3 with MMJB (use a fast & small setting like 32 kbps).
- Import the MP3 files to MC for getting the tags inside
- Delete the MP3 files from the HD.
- Rename the file extensions inside MC's database from .mp3 to .wav with the "Find and Replace" tool.
- Make a backup copy of the the Name field contents with the "Move / Copy Fields" tool. (Copy the field to some other empty field.)
- Refresh the file format info with the "Update Libary (from tags)" tool.
- Use the "Move / Copy Fields" tool for returning the track names. (The library update replaced the track names with filenames.)

3.
- Export the MMJB database. This will create a tab-delimited table in plain text format.
- Convert this text file to MC's XML format and save the file with the .mpl extension. You will need to create a system that converts the plain table to XML. I suppose that Access or some other database program could be used for this.
- Import the MPL file.

4.
Request an ID3v2.3 wave tag reader. Possibly JRiver would get a few more converted MMJB users if they could easily import their tagged wave files.

Well, I don't think MM allows export of the library at all...

I don't have MMJB 10 installed, but at least the version 7.5 can export its database as I explained (I have kept only this version for testing purposes). If this option is missing from MMJB10 perhaps an older version could be used for reading the tags and exporting the database.