Audacity Forum

Hi, I don't know if there is another post about this, please let me know if so.

I just checked audacity out and kind of don't know about it. But I have a few questions.

I want to be able to tag wav files and fill in metadata/id3 tagging for songs. I make music in another program (not audacity) and have wav files, I need to archive for protecting my work. I use wav for the high quality of it, and less mixing and mastering per loop or composition.

I also want to archive my cd collection finally. So I need a master file and then I can convert from it.

If I tag stuff with audacity, will the wav files retain the metadata outside of audacity? Or is it program specific and doesn't transfer between interfaces, software, pc to mac, etc.

I use a pc. One day I could switch to mac.

Thank you.

Metadata is only supported for WAV files in recent 1.3.x versions of Audacity, not 1.2.x.

id3 tags (metadata) is not a clearly defined standard and different programs read and write id3 data slightly differently. Audacity 1.3.x attempts to support the most commonly used metadata.

Flac is a lossless (perfect quality) format with good support for metadata - it was designed largely with archiving in mind. Unfortunately many programs do not support Flac, but because it is a lossless format it can be safely converted to other lossless formats such as WAV or AIFF. 16 bit Flac files are a well established standard and should provide good long term support, if you can live with the fact that you may need to convert them to play in your favourite applications.