Audacity Forum

SORRY for any duplication with this listing. I am new to Audacity and tried searching for my problem/solution, but found nothing identical in the manual and or forums.

I am using Audacity to digitize LPs and cassetts in WAV format. I am exporting them (export multiple) to Windows 7--MY MUSIC, having used labels to separate songs and filling in the artist and album info in the metadata form for each song. In MY MUSIC I have folders for each artist, with separate subfolders for each Audacity project (named for the album or project) as well as each ripped CD by that artist (named as the CD title). Each project and song shows up properly in MY MUSIC, and if played from there, is complete and plays properly. RIght now I have stopped after three cassett/LP audcity projects (one each for Robbie Robertson, Neil Young, and Steely Dan).

However, I seem to have overlooked something in saving the project or exporting it.When Media Player catalogues the Robertson, Young, and SD projects into the MUSIC LIBRARY, each is identified as having an UNKNOWN ARTIST. That is of concern because Media Player then combines all three files into a single UNKNOWN ARTIST file (with songs in alphabetical order by title regardless of the artist), and sometimes loses some individual songs, sometimes MANY individual songs.

I believe I am failing to do something in saving or exporting these Audacity projects that is confusing Media Player (maybe I am too forgiving of MP). RIght now it's just a minor aggravation, but I have many LPs and cassetts I want to digitize and it will all be for naught if all the Audacity projects end up being combined by MP into a single, gigantic, UNKNOWN ARTIST file.

I would greatly appreciate any advice/guidance anyone can offer. THANKS in advance for your help, and again, my apologies if I have overlooked any Audacity documentation or forum postings that already answer my question.

It's not your fault. The problem is due to limitations with metatag data.
Very few programs support metatag data in WAV files.

Audio CDs do not support metatag data either.

WMP is able to recognise commercial CDs from the disk id. It is also able to read Metatag data (id3 tags) from MP3 and WMA files.

Exporting form Audacity in MP3 format would be one way round the problem, but then you would loose the sound quality benefit of the WAV format. (MP3 and WMA are "lossy" formats and there is always some degree of sound quality loss when encoding in a lossy format).

Exporting in FLAC format is another option, but WMP does not support FLAC by default (though I think there is a plug-in for MP that enables FLAC support).

A third option would be to be more expansive with your file names:
"artist_name-track_title.wav"

or you could export as WAV for burning to CD, and export a second copy as MP3 for playing in WMP.

or you could export as WAV for burning on CD, and a second copy as FLAC (Flac files are the same sound quality as WAV files, but about half the size and support metatag data), and use a different (better) media player.

(My favourite audio player on Windows is "Foobar 2000" - it's free, lightweight, simple to use and plays just about any format of audio file (including audio CDs), and can also be used as a CD ripper and audio file format converter). WinAmp (free) is also very good.

Stevethefiddler:

Thanks for the info! Even if I had found it in Audacity or Media Player, I doubt the explanations would have been as clear as yours. THANKS again.

A couple followup clarifications for anyone:

1) What is different about the song labels from the metadata (album/artist) that MP recognizes the former but not the latter?

2) Option 3 looks best to me as I would like to keep all files in WAV. Will this address specificity definately overcome the MP collapsing all UNKNOWN ARTIST into one? Also, is this the type of address I enter at the EXPORT MULTIPLE window where I CHOOSE a location for saving the exported file.


THANKS again in advance for any/all help!

vermontdreaming wrote:1) What is different about the song labels from the metadata (album/artist) that MP recognizes the former but not the latter?

Unfortunately there is no standard format for metadata. About the closest thing to a "standard" is "id3 v1", but this is considered obsolete. id3 v.2 has largely replaced id2 v1, but there has never been an actual "standard" of any real authority and there are almost as many versions as there are media players. Also, id3 tags only really apply to MP3 files, with different "standards" used for other formats (such as WMA, Flac, Ogg, and so on). Audacity attempts to follow a line of maximum compatibility for the various formats, but unsurprisingly is unable to achieve complete compatibility. What most users do is to use Audacity to enter the basic metadata (such as track name), then use their media player to fill out the rest of the data.

vermontdreaming wrote:Option 3 looks best to me as I would like to keep all files in WAV. Will this address specificity definately overcome the MP collapsing all UNKNOWN ARTIST into one?

I don't know - I don't use WMP (personally I don't care if it has a nice shiny interface, I think it is a horrible player ) You will need to experiment with that yourself. If you come up with a really good, efficient scheme, perhaps you would like to post a description of you method here on the forum. (the "Recording Techniques" board would probably be the most appropriate place for such a post. http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewforum.php?f=26 )

Stevethefiddle:

THANKS once again for your expertise on this matter. I HAD tried the "track name" via Audacity, with the rest of the info entered in Media Player. However, there is an issue specific to MP that I am going to the Microsoft forum to delve into. In addition to not finding all the files in MY MUSIC (eventually to the point of not finding ANYTHING in My Music!), the data I enter via MP is gone the next time I open it, reverting to showing the project as UNKNOWN ARTIST, UNKNOWN ALBUM, etc. I am sure this is a file corruption or some MP issue, but so far I havent found anyone addressing this in the Microsoft forums I have checked.

One problem at a time, I guess!

THANKS again for your assistance.