id3 track field is erased for WAV format

GoldWave general discussions and community help
DougA
Posts: 63
Joined: Fri Dec 28, 2007 2:01 pm

Re: id3 track field is erased for WAV format

Post by DougA »

What I find concerning about this thread is learning that tags in a wav file (regardless of where they came from or even if they are "legal") can simply disappear should one use GW to edit the file. Things like that are often not found until way down the road when recovering that information is long gone, like an archived file years later. Seems to me, at the very least, every tag should be passed along to the output.

sorry for jumping into this fray, but I have archived files going back decades which are now the "master" and only file ... it's the archive file after all ... the sources are long gone. There's no way to even know what pieces of information existed in the originals (or added by some other process) that may not have survived. So really, it comes down to a trust issue, not if some upstream process used a "non-standard" chunk id. Frankly, I don't care (or how would I even know) that some piece of information was saved in a "non-standard" id or not. If it's in my file, I expect it be in the output file. I really don't expect (or want) GW to validate "standards" and (quietly) discard what isn't approved.

Ok, that's my two cents :-)
Doug
FH991586
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Joined: Thu Dec 24, 2020 12:00 pm

Re: id3 track field is erased for WAV format

Post by FH991586 »

That why you should always check and double check your saved file & back up before putting it safely away!

Working with paper archives & art made me nervous about any loss of the original support, most of all if it's for a "more efficient" digital one as stated by the powers that be...

When I finally learned by chance that I could input metadata in wave files using GW, that made my day! Now the mp3 that followed were done automatically in the same fashion, thus saving a lot of time.
Michael REMY
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Re: id3 track field is erased for WAV format

Post by Michael REMY »

hi,

i opened the post, maybe i can close it.

it is definitely not a bug.
now,i know it and manage the particularity of tags in WAVE files/

To avoid the "issue", maybe goldwave could add an opton to inform/alert the user there is infos in wave file which could be lost on save/process when it detects them.

Happy Xmas everyone. Happy Xmas to all worker in music industry and sofware enginers in music business too.
Long life to golwave x64 and goldwve x32.
GoldWave Inc.
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Re: id3 track field is erased for WAV format

Post by GoldWave Inc. »

The new GoldWave update ignore the case of chunk ids entirely. The Wave standard is practically defunct now, so no point in trying to enforce it anymore. Let's see how that works out.
TinPanFan
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Location: Texas

Re: id3 track field is erased for WAV format

Post by TinPanFan »

GoldWave Inc. wrote:
Wed Jan 06, 2021 5:27 pm
The new GoldWave update ignore the case of chunk ids entirely. The Wave standard is practically defunct now, so no point in trying to enforce it anymore. Let's see how that works out.
Hey Chris, could we have some more info, please? Wave standard defunct? I certainly wasn't aware and am now a bit concerned. I have about 28,000 tracks on my home media server - almost all in .WAV format. Should I be concerned?
GoldWave Inc.
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Re: id3 track field is erased for WAV format

Post by GoldWave Inc. »

No need for concern. Your Wave files will work for a long, long time, but no one controls or enforces the standard anymore. Even Microsoft ignores glaring errors in poorly formed Wave files.

The original RIFF Wave specification file had the following statement:
Use lowercase letters for temporary or prototype chunk type
The track chunk was never part of the original spec, so GoldWave used lowercase "itrk". Somewhere along the way, more programs used uppercase than lower case, so now it seems uppercase is the standard.

The next GoldWave update will save the track twice using both lower case and upper case chunk ids to be compatible with everything.
DewDude420
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Re: id3 track field is erased for WAV format

Post by DewDude420 »

FH991586 wrote:
Thu Dec 24, 2020 12:17 pm
DewDude420 wrote:
Wed Dec 09, 2020 3:01 pm
You shouldn't be storing raw audio in WAV format for long-term.
Why not? It's lossless, uncompressed, offers cd quality, and can be read by anything easily. I've been doing this for more than 15 years, starting while badly compressed MP3 ruled the dial-in internet... Sure, the metadata thing is a mess (took me a while to figure it out, thanks to GW!), but once you get the work around, it's ok.

I'm really curious on how you support your statement.
Mostly because WAV offers no real provision for verifying file integrity. With a FLAC decoder, it can quickly tell if the file is corrupted. WAV on the other hand...it just blindly assumes that any data it gets is sample data; so if your file is corrupted it can cause some nasty sounds to come out of your DAC. I've had tweeters blow because a WAV file decided to corrupt a few hundred samples and cause a screech.

It's also not recommended because it's just absolutely wasteful. I mean..I'm the first to say diskspace is cheap; but i try not to waste it needlessly with LPCM audio when something like FLAC will provide me the functions I need. Not to mention something like 192khz/24-bit is 9212kbps....that's nuts. Granted, I keep files with higher rates than that; they're not PCM.
FH991586
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Re: id3 track field is erased for WAV format

Post by FH991586 »

Any file can get corrupted... That's what back ups are for! You're not really presenting any solid argument here.
I've been using WAV files for 20+ years, and I don't see any need to change that after reading your post. Good for you if FLAC is your thing, but don't push it onto others without better data to support it. Personal anecdotes are not data, BTW.
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