I finally started ripping my CD with EAC only to find out that EAC isn't saving the ID3 info into the .WAV files. I am encoding the files at a later time with LAME and I get no tags. If I Rip and Encode at the same time I get the tags. Any ideas?

Thanks - Neil

Somebody correct me of I'm wrong, but to the best of my knowledge .WAV files don't carry tags.
You can however make EAC give the files a specific filename, like
<tracknumber> - <artist> - < trackname>.wav

You can then use a programe like mp3tagstudio or tag & rename to generate the ID3 tags from the filename.

You are right sir. WAV's are the sound equivalents of bitmap files, only the audio information is there.

-Zeke

hold up a second, there. I'm pretty sure EAC and several other rippers can append ID3 info to a wav file for later use by an encoder. This does not affect the wav files ability to play normally, of course. I've never used this but I'm 90% sure that it can be done. I'd check your EAC configuration carefully.

I have checked the EAC config a number of times. I just can't find anything that mentions appending ID3 info to the .WAV file... Rats...

EAC does not append tags to WAV files, but it will create tags on the MP3 file if you rip and encode in 'one' step.
So if you rip, then come bakc some other time abnd encode then you get no tags.
Having said that, I have a problem that it doesn't add the year to ID3V2 tags so I have to go back and add them manually.

There's always the option of having it make long file names with all the tag data specified in the file name. Then you can come along after the fact and use MP3 Tag Studio to translate the file names into tags.

For instace, a file name could be:

Rush - A Farewell to Kings (1977) - 02 - Xanadu.wav

I assume that EAC lets you specify the output file name? And that your encoder will accept long file names like that?

Another option: If you don't mind typing a little bit, you can just stick all the wave files in separate directories with TRACK01.WAV TRACK02.WAV file names, and use an encoder front-end to simplify the trackname typing. I did this for a long time with my "Jack the Ripper" utility (at my home page, link below). It's feature-poor and there are better alternatives out there now, but when I wrote it it was because I wanted to do things a certain way and there was nothing else that did things exactly that way in exactly that order. I encoded a large part of my collection by doing the ripping and encoding in two stages (rip a bunch of albums during the day and encode overnight), and my Jack utility was (at the time) the only thing that let me do it the way I wanted to do it.

i get annoyed by the missing year in the ID3v2 tags, but it's not so bad if you also throw in ID3v1 tags. i just make sure that my last step in any ripping session is to run everything through MP3 Tag Studio, and batch process everything i just ripped. i've got it set up to copy the ID3v1 year over to ID3v2, and a number of other small cleanup items before i move everything to the permanent archive.

--dan.

Errmm you can with Audiograbber and (e.g.) lame, and there is a tick box on EAC (latest version) but it's misleading as it doesn't work when ripping to PCM wav.

This need not be a complete problem, because when you are ripping using EAC, as long as you use a naming convention of artist - year - album - track no. - track name, then after you've encoded you can use MP3 Tag to populate the ID3 fields using the filename. I haven't found a way though to include genre, which is probably the only significant absent ID3 field, but again with MP3 Tag, it shouldn't take long. Isn't MP3 Tag great?

Any word on this...? I wonder if we kindly write the creator or post to his board, they may improve this. I loved ripping and ripping and ripping all day with AudioGrabber and then before bed dragging them to the ap to convert them overnight. When I do this with EAC, here are my problems:

1. If I have it rip to all one folder, it won't create folders for the mp3's based on album title. (In AG, you can rip to one folder and only use subfolders for encoding). You may be able to manually add the "%c/" after ripping to the filename box when you encode (and remove it manually when you rip again) but I haven't tried it.

2. EAC is not only missing the year in the id3v2 tags, but it is trunkating my fields! The track title is saved in its entirety in the filename, but in the id3, it is abbreviated as if I am only getting id3v1..... This may be my set up though... I'll check into it.

1. If I have it rip to all one folder, it won't create folders for the mp3's based on album title <snip>

In EAC my filename convention is:
Artist - Album Title - [track no.] - Track Name.mp3

It's not as ideal as your suggestion but it's easy to collect and move the files in the morning.

Rue

Hmm, I never actually tried it, but EAC has different settings for filenames when renaming depending on id3 tags and for the filename you are ripping to.
But anyway, I usually just set the directory/filename to rip to like I want them, and then proceed ripping and (background) encoding my CDs. EAC never failed on me with it's background encoding process. The current version can even save a backlog to file if you choose to stop EAC, and restart encoding from that backlog when you start it again.
Also, I never had EAC truncate my tags, and it always filled in the year tag as well for me. Which version of EAC are you using?

cu,
sven

I'm using the latest.... I don't think it is happening anymore, so I think it must have been a setting (truncating tags).

In reply to an earlier post, EAC is doing just fine with Year tags. Are you using the latest? Do you mean that FreeDB rarely has the info? I've noticed that it will look at cdplayer.ini first, and that does not store year.

Sven, I forget if it is Jackie from Audiograbber or the guy from EAC, but one of them signs their posts as cu, xxxx like you! It reminded me of you right away. A fellow Swede?

Could you tell me how to do the backlog? I would love to be able to stop encoding in the background, turn off my computer, go home and continue. Right now, if I do that, the ID3 tags are not made, so I have to use MusicMatch or something to generate the tags based on filename (a minor pain).

Hi.

Sven, I forget if it is Jackie from Audiograbber or the guy from EAC, but one of them signs their posts as cu, xxxx like you! It reminded me of you right away. A fellow Swede?

I just checked, and Andre Wiethoff (EAC's author) does so. Simple coincedence I would say.

Could you tell me how to do the backlog? I would love to be able to stop encoding in the background, turn off my computer, go home and continue. Right now, if I do that, the ID3 tags are not made, so I have to use MusicMatch or something to generate the tags based on filename (a minor pain).

I haven't actually tried that so far, I only ripped two or three CDs since that backlog saving feature was introduced, so no need for me to use that feature arose yet. However, if I understood Andre correctly, it _should_ do the id3 tagging when resuming the encode process. Subscribe to [email protected] and report the problem, Andre is quite responsive on problem reports there. Don't let Auguste Lebrun (about the tfabris of the eac group, only worse) confuse you though. He frequently gives wrong answers (that's why I say he is worse than tfabris).

cu,
sven

PS: Tony, please don't misunderstand me, you have almost always given correct answers to problems, and this board wouldn't be quite the same without you. You just happen to have a habit of telling people that your way to use the empeg is the only right way (which I disagree upon).

I _WISH_ they had a Tony-type bot to make a good FAQ for them! Would save Andre a lot of time answering the same questions all day!

PS: Tony, please don't misunderstand me, you have almost always given correct answers to problems, and this board wouldn't be quite the same without you. You just happen to have a habit of telling people that your way to use the empeg is the only right way (which I disagree upon)

That just means that he's an American.

Anyone have ANY idea why track numbers aren't appearing in the tags and why track titles are being shortened? I've posted about this, and so have others, but no responses on the EAC boards.... hmph

Guess what it was? Somehow MusicMatch reset itself to "Choose ID3v1 tags when ID3v1 and ID3v2 don't match". For some reason, EAC doesn't write the track number in v1 tags (this is what was confusing me). This also explains why MM was showing truncated track titles...

FYI, in an amazing piece of engineering, the original ID3 spec did not have the ability to store track numbers. That ``advanced'' feature was not added until ID3v1.1. Perhaps EAC is set up to write ID3v1 tags as ID3v1.0 and not v1.1.