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[DavidZ]

A couple of months ago, I built a library in MC 19 by importing about 1,300 CD rips in .aif format. All the metadata was intact, but i did not see any cover art among the files I imported. To my pleasant surprise, cover art appeared for about 75% of the CDs. My question is: does MC automatically go on the web's CD databases to fetch the album covers? Or is it somewhere in the metadata I didn't see?

The question has relevance now because I may use Korg Audiogate software to upsample all my files to 5.6MHz DSD --they sound way better than the 16/44 CD rips. Assuming I can do all the upsampling and retain the metadata (still a question I need to pursue w/ Korg), will MC again recognize these files and produce covers when I re-build the library with the DSD files? Thanks. -- David

[MrC]

Auto-import has a setting "Get cover art", which will cause MC to lookup cover art on YADB when it does not exist.

Artwork is saved as per your settings in Tools > Options > File Location > Cover Art.

[DavidZ]

Thanks, Mr. C. If I rebuild the library with DSD files that have the same metadata, then MC should be able to get the cover art the same way, correct?

[MrC]

I'm not sure what you mean by "rebuild", and I don't know how DSD files store cover art (can it be saved in the file?  this only matters to you if you are storing cover art within the file tags).

You can always select the file and right-click > Cover Art > get From Internet... to pull artwork that is missing.  It should work much of the time, but artwork may not exist on YADB (or the fallback FreeDB) for more esoteric works.  Artwork won't be found it you've munch your artist or album names to be "non-standard".

[Frobozz]

MC also saves the cover art in a local cover art directory cache
Tools >> Options >> File Location >> Cover Art

Look there to see if you have all of your cover art files there.
Copy that directory some place safe just to be sure.
Do your conversion.
Repopulate the cover art directory with the files that were there before.
Do a cover art lookup telling MC to do a quick find in file / cover art directory.

That should get the cover art back in the files if the artist and album names remain the same.  That should get the cover art back if the conversion using the Korg software removes the covers.

[DavidZ]

MrC/Frobuzz: Thanks -- very helpful. I'm beginning to think, though, that my bigger problem is that the metadata is stored in the .aif format. Thus, upsampling to a .DSF file would lose the metadata -- not just cover art but track order.  Meaning I would have to manually enter it all again in MC. That's not the conclusion I was looking for, but it may be reality. By all means, please let me know if I'm missing something. Thanks for your help. -- David

[MrC]

Again, I don't know much about DSD and its capabilities, but it may be possible that there are ways to preserve the metadata from your existing files and transfer it to your DSD files once imported.  One topic on the Wiki covers one possibility:

   http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Re-rip_existing_music_and_keep_tags_and_statistics

Try a few in your setup, and if you are having troubles, ask for more help.

[DavidZ]

Awesome, thanks!