Saving to WMA Lossless issue

[Stephen]

Just Kidding . . . altho . . . Big Brother is Watchin'

shhhhhhh . . . I think I heard the RIAA enter the room .

[Geebster]

shhhhhhh . . . I think I heard the RIAA enter the room .

Since it's primarily MY compositions and music, they better leave before I toss them out on their ear!
...and even if it wasn't.....(cough, cough).... they have to catch me first.... and I can run pretty fast for an old fart.

[PeterN]

So WAV is preferred over flac? I thought flac was widely accepted for archiving purposes. So now I'm totally confused

I do want to future proof the files as much as possible. I would like to save embedded tags with each file but as far as I know this can't be done with WAV?

How are you guys storing metadata for you wav files?

Space is an issue on my media center pc but not on my DAW. I have been transcoding all the wav files to wma lossless / Flac for use on the media center pc. Eventually I would like to get a NAS for centralized storage for both PCs.

I guess I'm a little confused as to what the best method is for archiving and tagging music files.

Pete

[Geebster]

I don't want to re-invent the wheel, so I would suggest you look HERE for a starting point to your questions.

FLAC, APE or any other compression program is fine for temporary storage, or for transferring via the internet, but I wouldn't recommend it for archival purposes for the reasons Craig has stated earlier in the thread.

GB

[Craig Maier]

Just as a reference point, my understanding is that the Library of Congress digital audio archiving standard is as follows:

24 Bit Resolution

96 KHz Sampling Rate

Non-Compressed .wav format

[Jimcco]

WAV it is but fix library

I was just thinking about converting my whole APE library back to WAV when I read this thread, so went ahead and did it. It was an unnecessary hastle to change them to WAV to work on them with DC7.

That said I have to wonder why the DC7 library is set up to use only tags related to MP3 or WMA. If we are using WAV files which are unrelated to the on file tags, why can't we get more flexability on tag fields? Those WMA tags really don't deal well with classical librarys where movements, and multiple performances of a compisition are likely to be in the same library. I have 6 copies of Beethoven's 9th in my files; 2 of the same performance(1 from LP and 1 from CD). There is really no way to do this with "Path" and have retreval still be useful.

[Craig Maier]

I did not know that .wav supports tags. Do they? Is there a standard?

[Jimcco]

WAV files don't store tags. That's the point. A seperate library data file is necessary anyway to catalog stuff that's in WAV files so why not let it be flexable as to data fields which are available.

[Craig Maier]

I do not understand what you are asking for.

[Jimcco]

Craig,
Basically we need the ability to let users define the data fields being used in the library.

Following is a list of fields I am using in J River Media Center library along with examples of data that might reside in a field for a given file.

Field--------------------Typical Data for a given file
Genre level 1------------Classical
Genre level 2------------Symphony
Composer---------------Beethoven
Composition-------------Symphony no 9 in D Minor
Movement---------------4
Ensamble-Orchestra------Chicago Symphony
Conductor---------------Stolti
Principle Instrament------Vocal
Featured Artist-----------Lorengar,Minton,Burrows, Talvela
Duration-----------------17:40
Opus--------------------Op 125
K Number
Tempo------------------Presto
Common Name-----------Choral
File Type----------------wav
Performance Date--------1962
Cat-Id-------------------London 430 438-2
Album Title--------------The Solti Collection beethoven Symphony no 9
Track-------------------4
File Name----------------Symphony No 9 in D minor 4 London 430 438-2
Path---------------------L:\Music\Classical\Symphony\Beethoven\Symphony No 9 in D Minor 4 London 440 438-2.wav



I have about 2000 files in this library and am only 1/3 done with Cd's and 1/5 with LP's. The above library fields are all sortable in hierarchy as any tabular data base would be.

[Craig Maier]

Wow! That sure is a lot of fields. I just embed the data that you mention into the existing fields and the search engine finds what I am looking for. But, we can look at this in the future; sure makes the hierarchy structure complicated though.

[Jimcco]

Craig,
I made a small (18k) spreadsheet file that looks like my J River Library. I could email it for you to look at. It demonstrates the complexities of Classical libraries.
Jim

[Craig Maier]

That would be great - - - send it to:

craig@diamondcut.com

Thanks

[Geebster]

Why risk compatabiltiy problems down the line so that you can save 50% in storage space now? Most of the real cost is in the effort to produce these things and not the cost of data storage.

---

How would you feel 5 years from now if you could not find a system that could decode your lossless compression scheme of your precious collection? I would really feel quite terrible about it. My archive is simply in .wav on a 1 TByte drive with two back-ups of the same. I sleep nicely at night because of that combination.

I recently had a scare that really highlights these thoughts. I've been slowly converting all of my old .flac files into uncompressed wav and ran into a problem file the other day. I tried 3 different decoders and the the file wouldn't convert properly back to it's native .wav; even the "official" FLAC decoder wouldn't touch the file. Finally, in desperation I tried an old version of Winamp to decode the file...... Luckily for me it worked, but it could have easily not have. This was a lesson for me to stay away from any compression scheme for long term storage.

GB

[Craig Maier]

GB -

There is a saying common in the engineering world that sums up the situation nicely and it is:

"Standard is Better than Better"

Craig