Need Help in having Itunes Tag 1 Tb of lssless Wav

Ah yes, another person bitten by the WAV bug. Every time I see someone here advise using WAV files "because they sound better" (NOT validated by my own tests, by the way) I cringe. And this is why: WAV files have no standard way for tagging the file with the song title, composer, artist, etc. So they end up as meaningless files scattered across someone's hard drive.

Your best option might be to go back to MediaMonkey and export all the files into a format that is mutual between MediaMonkey and iTunes. I would normally advise to use FLAC but iTunes doesn't make that easy. I'm not sure if iTunes and MediaMonkey have any lossless formats in common except for WAV (iTunes uses ALAC and AIFF, MediaMonkey uses FLAC), so it's possible you may need to use high-quality lossy formats (such as MP3).

Maybe someone else has some advise here?

Bottom line: DON'T USE WAV!

Michael

WAV files do have some problems.

iTunes can’t organize tracks if it does not see the track ID tags which get embedded into them during the encoding. – ripping process. The ripping software has that info only fo wAVs

Usually WAVs are temp files. Uncompressed tracks used to produce albums songs etc. into other more manageable file formats. The main reason for this is the WAV or wAVE formats do not retain or have embedded into them any meta data . Such as title info, track #, album art work, album release date, etc.

All of that info for those formats resides in the data base of the software you originally chose to rip them into WAVE or wAVs. Not in the tracks themselves . So long as you keep using the database of the orig ripper, you’re ok

But if you start moving them onto some other pc, or drive, the new media player then has none of the orig track and title info available to it as it remains in the previous media players database only.

This is why folks choose to use FLAC, AIFF, WAV PAK, or even apple Lossless (ALAC/M4A), or if going the compressed route, aAC or AAC protected as with older iTunes downloads (m4p), or merely MP3s.

There are marginal sonic diffs from wAV to these other lossless formats but the metadata stays with the tracks, normally regardless the media player you use to replay them with in the future. Metadata is increasingly a quite sought after aspect of musical enjoyment, and a must for continuedd cataloging or archiving.

Maybe your orig media player.. the one you used to rip all those WAV files with can convert them into FLAC, AIFF, Wav Pack, or Appl;e Lossless thereby adding the track info within it’s database into the new file which will contain and keep that info into each track.

Past that it’s going to have to be done all by hand typing in each track, album, artist.. etc. and if you do not convert at some point to file types which maintain the albums pertinent info you can count on doing the renaming process again at some point by hand.

Of course there might be some new whiz bang software out there will do it all for you. Good luck with that.

There's nothing wrong with .WAV files if you're not going to use iTunes. If I had all those files I'd ditch the Mac Mini save myself some work. Windoze or Linux can pop PCM out a USB port.

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I have to disagree about "nothing wrong with wav files" and it has nothing to do with iTunes. His problem has everything to do with wav files.

If you organize your library with categories like genre or any other criteria or if you attach album art work, it will all be lost if you transfer it to another player. It will also be lost if the library file on the player you are using gets corrupted. Using a file format you can tag means it stays with the song, not in a separate file that can get corrupted or is incompatible with a new player.

I've taken the time to categorize and add high resolution art work to about 5,000 albums. I would hate to have to do it again.

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I agree with Herman. There's absolutely no reason to use a format like .wav when there are alternatives that offer the same or better fidelity without the problems with metadata that can't be avoided with .wav files.