Anyone know WMA?

Hmm... I'm suddenly wondering... Did you fire up Meedio/WMP and then "open" a song in your collection to play or double click on the song file itself and have that launch Meedio or WMP?

For most players, and this applies to both foobar and iTunes as well, you need to use some form of "add to library." For example, in iTunes I can tell it to search for new songs in a specified directory and it will run through that directory--and all subdirectories--looking for songs not already in the library. When it finds such a song, it will read the tag data, and add the song to its own library file. Then, I never need to do that again to access the song--it will automatically show up in the library when I open iTunes the next time...

I have used my ALAC files in a PC environment and in a Mac environment--they are stored on a network server and I've access those files from both a Mac Mini and several Windows XP computers. The question is usually whether the software player you are running is compatible with the format--slimserver (used in conjunction with Squeezebox devices) will understand ALAC files and play them. However, my old Turtle Beach audiotron network players (basically, dedicated player software in a network box) would not play ALAC files. There is a plug in for foobar that will allow foobar to play ALAC files, but I gather it is a bit flakey.

this is great! thanks! I have tried what you told me. And eventhough WMP or Meedio recognize the file name (with album artist in it) and add it to My Libraries, they do not add it to the internal library of the program (the one that lets you search for Album/Artist, etc.)

Now, I am curious what should I do. Whether using ALAC or FLAC. (I am about to rip my entire collection and I don't know what to do.) Eventually I might use an iPod but it's somewhat unlikely that I move to Mac. (Used PC all my life and I am very familiar with it).

How can I rip to ALAC using EAC?

thanks, Josep

Hmmm... What do your song files look like? When I rip, I specify for EAC the following format: %A\%C\%N-%T

(This examples presumes ripping to wav files)... That gives me a structure where, for example, I have:

C:\..\My Music\Cash, Johnny\American Recordings\01-Delia's Gone.wav
C:\..\My Music\Cash, Johnny\American Recordings\02-Let The Train Blow The Whistle.wav

If you set up EAC with the format %A-%C-%T, you would end up with, instead:

C:\..\My Music\Cash, Johnny-American Recordings-Delia's Gone.wav
C:\..\My Music\Cash, Johnny-American Recordings-Let The Train Blow The Whistle.wav

If I "play" the first set in foobar, it would come up with the song titles (it assumes filename = song title) identified as:

01-Delia's Gone.wav
02-Let The Train Blow The Whistle.wav

But, in the second instance, it would come up with:

Cash, Johnny-American Recordings-Delia's Gone.wav
Cash, Johnny-American Recordings-Let The Train Blow The Whistle.wav

In neither case would the "Artist" or "Album" field be filled in, since WAV files don't have tags... Is the second set of files what you are seeing? I.e., no tags but artist/album?

I think I mentioned "masstagger" for foobar. If you have your files the way I do, you can select files in the library, and tell masstagger to fill in the Artist and Album fields. In the latter case, you can also tell foobar to retag from the filename itself... If you are interested, masstagger comes with the foobar installation, and I'd direct you to:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=12302

Don't be intimidated--look for "Guess values from filename" or something like that. Its pretty easy, although I'd do some test files before running 15000 wav files.

My alternative is ripping to ALAC and using iTunes. I start EAC and set the options for compression to iTunesEncode:

http://www.rarewares.org/files/aac/iTunesEncode46.zip

iTunesEncode is set up to create AAC files, but its pretty easy to change from AAC encoding to ALAC encoding--see the sixth message down here:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1358221��

Because iTunesEncode actually interfaces directly with iTunes, the net result is the ripped files are automatically written into the library and the tags are automatically passed from EAC. So, if you can use CDDB to get the Artist/Album data in EAC, it will show up in iTunes...

Hope this helps...

Actually, it shows like the first set. So, basically, I ripped on EAC and then double-clicked on the file to play on WMP (or Foobar). The name of the file is as following:

Keb'Mo' - A better man.flac

Oddly enough one file is recognized with the WMP icon. This is: Keb'Mo' - Slow Down.m3u

Regardless the name, if I play any *.flac file with either Foobar or with WMP, it will play it but it will not allow me to search for Album, Artist, etc. WMP or Foobar will only list the album within "My Libraries" folder - and when I go to the "Artists" folder, it would simply list the album under "Unknown". Odd.

One final question (sorry...) I haven't figured out how to copy/burn a CD using EAC? How do you do your copies?

Thanks so much for all this help. Really.

Josep

I haven't really used EAC to duplicate CDs. I think, if I recall correctly, you can ask EAC to create a CUE Sheet (image?), then then it to write the CUE Sheet to a blank CD, which burns the songs in order with identical between song gaps as the original (presuming you also ripped the songs)...

OK, your file "Keb'Mo' - A better man.flac" is *not* tagged. Fire up foobar2000, shift select all of the Keb'Mo' files from the main window, and then do the following:

1. Right click on the selected items; this brings up a menu.

2. Select "masstagger->edit tags" from menu that appears.

3. Immediately below the "actions to perform" window, hit the "Add" button.

4. This brings up a pop-up window with a drop down menu set to "set value..."--click on the down arrow and select "guess value from filename..." Then hit the "OK" button.

5. On my set up, this brings up another pop-up with a drop down menu, currently set to "%track%-%title%." You can see if there is something close in the drop down you can edit, or just type in, without the quotes: "%artist% - %title%". Then hit "OK."

6. You should be back at the main "masstagger" window--if you now hit the "Run" button, it will create "artist" and "title" tags for the selected songs by decoding your filename naming convention.

A little observation. I think if you look at your EAC settings (EAC->EAC Options...->Filename) you will find that you have the following string in the left text box:

%A - %T

That is what is causing your filenames to be written with the Artist, then a dash, then the title. Look at the string I referenced above--

%A\%C\%N-%T

This means when I rip, I end up with directory structure, since the "\" is for a directory (EAC will create them if they aren't already there). In other words, I have a series of folders (directories), with one folder for each artist. The next entry (%C) is the CD title, so in each artist folder, I have separate folders for each album by that artist. The %N-%T means that, in each album folder, I have a series of files that represent the tracks on that album, in a standard format with track number, then a dash, then the song title.

Soo... When I fire up foobar, I can select a bunch of songs (they *all* follow this format), go to masstagger, and instead of using that %artist%-%title% line, I can enter:

../../%artist%/%album%/%tracknumber%-title%

This allows me to "create" tags from the directory structure, so it fills in the artist, album, tracknumber, and title fields.

Your .m3u file isn't really a song. Files with the .m3u extension are playlists. You must have told EAC (or whatever you ripped with) to create a playlist for the album. The file extension is probably associated with WMP10 in your windows set up, so it shows up with a WMA icon. But, like I said, its not a song file, its a playlist that just lists the songs from that album in playlist order--open it with Word and you will see its just a text file. The real cue here is that the name is the *album* you ripped, not a song on the album...

Good luck, this gets confusing.