[silverlight]

While most of you probably don't use WAV files to listen to your music via iTunes (Mac), to those who do or think they ever would (or otherwise don't mind taking a minute to make a request), would be very helpful as they do listen to feedback.

Like a few programs in Windows that will allow artwork attachment/assignment to WAV files (i..e, MediaMonkey), it would be wonderful if Apple would enable the same.  It's quite simple, as they already do this with their current tagging scheme with WAV files - any tagging information inputed into iTunes specific to a WAV file is stored in a database.  This covers every aspect of a tag except Artwork.  This last little piece would be a huge improvement for those of us who live in WAV's world (and have a keen interest in staying there for now).  Thank you!! 

Here's the link: http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html   Link

If it speeds it up, here's some text to copy and paste into the form:

Dear Apple, I would greatly appreciate it if you would include in an upcoming version of iTunes the ability to assign artwork to songs stored in the WAV file format, in addition to the text labels that are currently supported.  Many thanks!

[Nels Ferre]

Done. Hope that helps. 

[srb]

Done.
 
Except for a small amount of downloaded songs, my library is mostly ripped CDs to .wav files.
 
I use an inconvenient workarund for the several dozen albums I have where the artwork was not automatically imported.
 
I extract a second 256kbs .mp3 copy of the first tune (why 256kbs and not a smaller file? - to not confuse them with the 128kbs and 160kbs downloaded files I also have in my library).
 
I uncheck that .mp3 copy so it will not be played in the library or playlists.  I then drag artwork into the artwork window.  Although that window will only show artwork for the mp3 copy of that one song, the artwork will show up in the Cover Flow mode when any song from that album is playing.
 
Yeah, I could use this enhancement!
 
Steve

[silverlight]

thanks guys!

It's funny, I've been ripping a bunch of albums into WAV with dbpoweramp in windows, which places the artwork into the ripped folder.  While I've ripped many dozens of albums in the past week, there's one WAV album that actually came in with artwork, which is why I know it's possible.  It's not the standard artwork, it's the one I manually selected to drop into the folder (and dragged the whole folder into itunes).  as is typical with a wave file, I can't modify it's artwork (remove it).  I've tried transferring a couple songs to a different computer's itunes and no artwork.  so definitely a little bug in the database that brought it in....  or.... a potential feature   

[Robin Hood]

I also use dBpoweramp to rip my CDs to WAV files with album artwork in the ripped album folder.  This works extremely well for MediaMonkey, cMP/cPlay and XXHighEnd.  However I cannot effectively import my music library into iTunes.  I get the WAV files alright with track titles but none of the other tag info such as artist, genre, etc. is imported.  And there is no album artwork.

The recommendation from Apple and other users is to re-rip my CDs using iTunes to create a duplicate music library.  This to me is a non-starter for anyone who has an existing music library.  What should be a simple import operation from one database library into another seems not possible with the proprietary and limited iTunes capabilities.

[silverlight]

The way I have gotten around tagging (excluding covers) with itunes is to dual encode into WAV and something else like mp3.  I load both into itunes and then use a little utility program to copy and paste the tags over to the WAV file and then delete the MP3 (thereby avoiding any manual editing).  It takes longer than just ripping a CD into iTunes, but not too bad (for CD's I'm re-ripping with dbpoweramp, all the tag info is already there so skips the need to dual-encode).  The utility is called iTunify.  If you ever decide to pursue it, I can write up a few tips on how to get it's tagging functionality down.

[Robin Hood]

Thanks silverlight, I'm interested.  I use dBpoweramp to rip my CDs to WAV files for other players such as cMP/cPlay or XXHighEnd.  So let's assume my music library is structured as follows:

Top Folder - Music - contains all the genre folders
  Level 1 sub-Folder - Genre (7 genres) - where each genre folder contains the artists for the genre
    Level 2 sub-Folder - Artist (400 artists) - where each artist folder contains the albums for the artist
      Level 3 sub-Folder - Album (4000 albums) - where each album folder contains the WAV music tracks and artwork for the album

Now when I right click on any WAV audio file to see the properties I get the Audio Properties and the ID-Tag info from dBpoweramp.  When I use any player such as MediaMonkey or XXHighEnd, I see the album info and artwork.  However when I import these files into iTunes I only get the track titles for the WAV files.  So if iTunify can bring the tag info and artwork into iTunes en masse, I would be interested.  However if iTunify requires manual intervention say for each album or worse, each music track, then that's too much effort. 

[Crimson]

iTunes uses similar nesting for its directory structure, but does not use genre as a sub-folder (iTunes Library > Artisit > Album). When ripping using dBPoweramp, where (and in what kind of file) is the tag info and artwork stored?

[silverlight]

dbpoweramp is somehow embedding some tagging info into the WAV files (Spoon explained this in a post somewhere), b/c when I would open them up in Logitech's Squeezecenter (before when I used it), or MediaMonkey, all the info would be there (and in MediaMonkey's case the artwork as well as it's stored in a "cover.jpg" file).  With dbpoweramp, you can choose whatever folder/file-naming scheme you want, but the default is Artist\Album\artist-tracknumber-trackname.WAV for example.

[Crimson]

dbpoweramp is somehow embedding some tagging info into the WAV files

Well, that's the problem. There is no standard for embedding metadata into wav files. I've read accounts of rippers being compatible with certain programs but not with others.

[Robin Hood]

For any decent database there doesn't need to be a standard for importing data.  All you need to do is specify the type of data and where the data is located.  Thus any person can manually import my music library since you know that all my music tracks and artwork are in the album folder, and the album folder is located under the artist folder, which is the default for many music players.  The genre folder was just an example that does not need to exist or could be anything such as user rating or year recorded.

In addition to the obvious information anyone can clearly see from the directory structure, there is a wealth of information in the individual tags to each WAV file.  Thus if iTunes was a capable database, iTunes would be able to draw info from the file directory structure and it would be able to also draw data from the individual tags of each audio file.

If you believe you must have a standard, then (CSV) comma separated values (data), Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Access are about as universal as you'll find.  All three will handle alphanumeric data fine and I believe Access can store pictures either by embedding them inside Access or linking them to external files.

Maybe I'm missing something but if I repeat the same manual process to import the album info into iTunes for 10 albums, any worthy program should be able to repeat that process hundreds or thousands of times to the limit of the computer hardware or software.  To me that's one of the reasons why we use computers

[Crimson]

You are quite correct, but the standard I was referring to was regarding the algorithms that embed tag info and artwork into the actual music data file (e.g. FLAC, ALAC, AIFF, etc.), thus negating the requirement for specific directory hierarchies and separate artwork files.

[XKevinX]

Done.  I could agree more.  I'm sure it's not that big of a deal.

Kevin

[silverlight]

thanks Kevin!
best,
Geoff