Newbie question: I just upgraded to 2.1.2 yesterday on a Windows 10 PC and had been using Audacity 1.2 briefly before that to transfer my vinyl albums to my PC.
Most of my music is classical and I generally view it by composer in iTunes and Sonos. I’ve mostly got the Audacity metadata editor working right but must create a Composer field for every .aup file from which I export tracks using Export Multiple. The manual says at http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/metadata_editor.html that “customized tags are not supported for WAV and will not be exported or imported.” In fact, Audacity does export composer information with the WAV file but does not save that field to the template when I click "Save/Overwrite the tags.xml file and “Set default” as the manual instructs.
I’ve edited the album/artist/track info in iTunes (in the table listing in Songs view) but that had no effect on the WAV file; I figured it was stored separately by iTunes.
Thanks for the suggestion;I’ll check the iTunes docs to see how to edit metadata directly in the WAV file. I’ll also experiment with the other audio formats.
iTunes does not read WAV file metadata written by other applications. As you suspected, it just stores WAV file metadata changes made in iTunes in its local database.
Thanks for pointing out that text needs updating for the better support we now offer for WAV metadata. I will clarify that text for the next 2.1.3 Manual.
Up-to-date information clarifying that both INFO and ID3 tags are exported for WAV (and that “Composer” is exported as ID3 and not INFO) is given in the blue box at the top of the Metadata Editor page, in the linked-to Frequently Asked Question. Here is the FAQ: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/faq_opening_and_saving_files.html#meta.
If you are trying to add an empty “Composer” tag, there is a bug that stops that working. The bug will be fixed for the next 2.1.3 release but to work around it, click in the “Value” cell for your custom “Composer” field, press SPACE on your keyboard, then save and/or make default.
I’ve edited the album/artist/track info in iTunes (in the table listing in Songs view) but that had no effect on the WAV file; I figured it was stored separately by iTunes.
I sort-of thought iTunes has its own database but I didn’t know if it would work with WAV files. I use MP3s with iTunes and my iPod, so I know it can read ID3 tags from MP3 files. If you’re using iTunes and WAV files, that may be your only choice. With WAV files, you generally have to work-out a solution for whatever player you are using.
I’ll also experiment with the other audio formats.
Normally, I’d recommend FLAC if you want a lossless format. It makes a good archive format because it’s lossless compression and tagging is standardized. (I don’t know if a composer tag is standard.) But, I don’t think iTunes supports FLAC so you might have to use ALAC (similar, just more “Apple”).
The lossy formats (MP3 and AAC) can be very good! Don’t automatically dismiss lossy compression just because you are a critical listener… With a high quality (high bitrate) setting, the MP3/AAC file is usually indistinguishable from the original (in a proper [u]blind listening test[/u]).
Still, many people like to maintain a lossless archive. If you ever want to edit the file or convert to another format you can go back to the lossless file and avoid multiple generations of loss compression.
And for MP3, and M4A including Apple Lossless, iTunes does actually save metadata changes to the file. However Audacity can’t write a custom “Composer” tag for M4A.