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[matanoosh]

Hello.
I am a newbie to MC and I'm trying to retain the tag, artwork and all other peripherial information associated with the audio files when ripping my CD's with EAC, to be played with MC13.

I understand that Due to format restrictions, while FLAC supports extra info other than pure audio embedded in the file - WAV does not. And I prefer to rip CD's directly to WAV.

Can anyone suggest a good method to "rip", or preserve the crucial peripherial information (artwork, song names, genre, year etc) during the WAV ripping process? Is there any other function/program I should use to rip only that information alongside the actual WAV rip?

Thanks a bunch.

[llafriel]

Why won't you use flac? No information is lost when transcoding to flac.

[matanoosh]

Thanks for your response.
I won't use FLAC because WAV sounds better on my system. I aim for top quality, and since J River does the decoding in realtime, and after I compared WAV vs FLAC and found differences, I prefer to use WAV. Perhaps AIFF is another alternative?

[JimH]

Thanks for your response.
I won't use FLAC because WAV sounds better on my system. I aim for top quality, and since J River does the decoding in realtime, and after I compared WAV vs FLAC and found differences, I prefer to use WAV. Perhaps AIFF is another alternative?

The outputs from WAV and FLAC (or any other lossless format) are identical (same arrangement of 1's and 0's).  We prefer the APE format.

If you're interested in sound quality, please see the Audiophile Info thread on the MC13 board.

[Alex B]

Usually losslessly compressed files can be decoded at 20-200x speed on a modern PC. At 1x speed during playback the CPU usage is negligible. There is always enough decoded PCM data in the buffer to make the stream work correctly. In some cases reading the bigger wav files from the storage media may actually consume more CPU than reading and decompressing the smaller losslessly compressed files.

However, MC is a great program for someone who still prefers to use wav. MC can hold all file metadata in its database independently of the possibly existing file tagging support. Wav files don't support tagging so the only option is to store tag info in the database.

MC has a secure ripper that is capable of disabling the drive's cache (if the drive happens to cache audio data), rereading possible bad sectors several times and rip logging. The secure mode need to be enabled in the ripping options.

If the files are ripped with MC the tags are automatically stored in the database. They may be obtained from the online CD database if the disc exist there or simply typed in the ripping dialog window.

If you prefer to rip with EAC you can configure it to save all CDDB info to the file name and path structure.

After you have imported the files to MC you can populate the library fields by using MC's "Fill Properties From Filename" tool. Later on you can add any number of predefined or user defined tags and the database will hold them.

Since wav files cannot hold tags it is very important to regularly create library backup files and store them in a safe location. In addition to backing up the complete database MC can export MPL playlists that contain all field values. It might be a good idea to export each album as an MPL playlist to the album folder after the database files are fully tagged.


EDIT

I forgot to say anything about cover art. Similarly like wav files cannot store tags it is not possible to embed cover art in the files. You need to use external cover art with them. MC can link external jpg files in several ways. You can add the links manually or let MC to find the image files if they stored according to one of the available naming conventions. In addition, you can use the excellent "Get From Intenet" tool that can query an online database and allow you to select the best cover art file if more than one is found.

[matanoosh]

Alex,
I appreciate your detailed response. I assume the tools you mentioned are available only on MC13, and not 12?

[Alex B]

The tools and features I mentioned were already in MC12. Actually, most of them have been in MC for several years.

[matanoosh]

Sorry Alex, I couldn't find the tools you mentioned, both for cover art and for retrieving tracks/album info. Can you point me in the right directions inside the menus?

[Alex B]

Sorry Alex, I couldn't find the tools you mentioned, both for cover art and for retrieving tracks/album info. Can you point me in the right directions inside the menus?

For filling library data from the filenames and paths: Select the files > right-click > Library Tools > Fill Properties From filename

For downloading cover art from the online database: Select the files > right-click > Cover Art > Get From Internet -- this can work only if you have the Artist and Album values correctly tagged. The database is based on user submissions. If you add your own cover art that is not yet available online you can submit it (... Cover Art > Submit To Internet)