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Why would itunes strip data from .wav files? 3 Qs:

Friends,

Turns out I did not lose metadata, only data. But I am having a meta-bummer ("a bummer about bummers") as a consequence.

Three months ago, I began to store itunes music from a large CD collection on an outboard 500 GB WD hard drive. Lots of good advice here at Audiogon re: how to hi fi a computer system. Audiogon posts, along with some generous consults from veterans, led me to buy a second hard drive (also a WD, but bigger at one TB), along with a Squeezebox, and an Ipod.

I have been slowly ripping CDs to itunes, and had about 3,000 songs as .wav files. I plan to convert them to ALC in a Smart Playlist once my Ipod gets full.

When I copied HD#1 contents to HD#2, both hard drives dropped artist, album, genre, composer and showed lots of "can't find the path" exclamation points (!).

With help from several Audiogon users I have successfully recovered my .wav files and reduced !s. (delete Library, Import Folder from HD#1 titles 'itunes music'). But everything appears as a song name only.

QUESTION #1: CAN I FIND THE MISSING DATA? IS THERE A SEARCHABLE FILE EXTENSION? OR DID THEY SIMPLY DISAPPEAR?

QUESTION #2: THERE SEEMS TO BE NO ALTERNATIVE TO RE-RIPPING HUNDREDS OF CDS BY PHYSICALLY PLACING THEM IN MY PC'S CD DRIVE. (NO ONE DESCRIBES A PROCESS OF SIMPLY SENDING CD DIGITIAL OUT TO LAPTOP AS A PCM STREAM.) IF I HAVE TO GO THROUGH THAT LIVING HECK AGAIN, HOW DO I AVOID A RECURRENCE OF THE DATA LOSS DURING BACKUP?

QUESTION 3: Apparently because I use an external HD, I have to disable error-correction when ripping in itunes. I am not too computer facile (this may already be apparent), but as long as I am taking the time, I would like to invest a few more minutes and use error correction in itunes. (I am not ready for EAC yet.) Can it be done?

Thanks to all of you who posted and emailed.

Cheer,
Rick_van
rick_van
jax2
3,031 posts
 
Thanks for the correction, Michael. So is metadata-like information actually attached to the file, or is it a function of the software? I learned just enough about this stuff to be dangerous, so am open to learning more in order to become a lethal weapon! I found out about the WAV drawbacks when I discovered that I could not manually attach album artwork to my WAV rips within iTunes - yet some of my WAV files had the artwork imported from Apple. So obviously there was some way to attach the data - I assumed it was indirectly through the software.

Marco
herman
2,253 posts
 
Yes it is indirectly. The artwork is not attached to the wav files. It is stored elsewhere and there is a link to the song file. It the "elsewhere" gets corrupted or the link is broken or corrupted iTunes will never be able to find it.

Apple lossless will store the data concerning that song as part of the file as tags so it won't get lost. It stores this info about wav files elswhere so it can get lost.

BTW the artist's name is not metadata. Metadata is data about other data. Artist names, album titles, song titles, genre, etc. is just data.

Metadata would be things like playlists, play count, your ranking of albums, etc.
rdb001
9 posts
 
I use iTunes to rip and manage and Apple lossless, but I have ongoing Album Art problems. The most vexing problem is when I ask SlimServer to access my iTunes library. Countless albums (and I think some but not necessarily all songs within a given album) show up with no album art! Is there a better alternative for ripping on Macs assuming you want lossless tracks?
synthfreek's avatar
synthfreek
627 posts
 
I thought the proper way to do what you were needing to do was use the "consolidate library" feature under the advanced menu. This way will keep all your directories correct. I had no problems when I did this. To convert all of your library to Apple Lossless why can't you just command A everything and do a batch process under the advanced menu as well? It will take a while to process but it will double your hard drive space(not literally but it will free up tons of room).
sufentanil's avatar
Ag insider logo xs@2x
sufentanil
782 posts
 
Synthfreek, you can convert them to Apple Lossless BUT when the source file is itself a lossy MP3 file, you've already lost data from the original CD, and now you're converting it to lossless -- too late. To preserve all of the information, you need to go straight from the CD (or another lossless format, such as WAV or FLAC).

Michael
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