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In Reply to: RE: Help with ripping with EAC posted by Stale on July 20, 2008 at 21:03:32
For a start, let's understand that WAV files do not support metadata content also referred to as "tags". File types that do have tags include M4A (Apple AAC and ALAC (lossless), MP3, FLAC, and AIFF (Apple uncompressed).
iTunes "solves" the problem of no tags, (in a manner of speaking), by maintaining a separate, XML based library file and a subdirectory wherein cover art is stored. It does this regardless of whether the music file does or does not have tags. However if the file has tags, iTunes will maintain the tags (for the most part, as far as I have investgated). On the other hand the behaviour of iTunes with respect to "importing" and "exporting" cover art in particular from/to tags is unpredictable, at least for me.
I know that Foobar2000, (at least late versions), supports cover art in two different ways: (1) Default UI reads cover art from tags; (2) Columns UI can be configured to read cover art from a file in the same subdirectory as the music file. I'm pretty sure WinAmp takes cover art from tags as does Windows Media Player. In the latter at least, you can paste graphics files, however I'm suspect that it maitains a separate metadata library something like iTunes.
I have a mixture of file types myself, mostly Apple Lossless (ALAC with the M4A extension), FLAC, MP3, and a small number of APE. I and members of my family use more than one player -- so for us it is important to have portability among players. On the whole the best solution in my case is to embed the cover art in the tag. The most reliable way for me is to use the tag editor, Tag&Rename which so far has proven a very good product. But of course I don't have to deal with the tagless WAV files.
Purists will insist that uncompressed WAV or AIFF files sounds better on their systems all the while acknowledging that lossless formats like FLAC, ALAC, and APE are indeed lossless. Personally I don't find any real difference on my system. It's likely fair to say that with sufficient processing power and a well-tuned computer, lossless will sound identical to uncompressed.
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