Album Art and .wav files

jaywax wrote:
You very detailed response was extremely educating and give me pause to wonder whether I should convert my tracks to the lossless format. I now have about 15,000 tracks stored as WAV files - in effect, exact CD quality. Are the lossless formats really lossless --- meaning, if listened to on a super high quality preamp and amp with very serious speakers, will there really be NO difference from the orginal CD sound?

And finally, if itunes stores the art it gets from the itunes store in a separate file, why can't art from other sources be stored in the same type of file?

A few anally retentive types say Apple Lossless is not as good as for example FLAC but it is a true lossless format and therefore should be identical audio quality. It is I suppose possible that some Apple Lossless decoding software might be introducing artifacts. Personally I feel it is CD quality and I am happy with it.

To reiterate, Apple Lossless is as its name suggests a lossless format, meaning that it is supposed to contain exactly the same audio and quality as the original CD (except compressed). If it helps prove this, with all your music in Apple Lossless, iTunes does not have to do the 'analysing for gapless playback' that it does have to do with lossey formats.

If you are familiar with file compression, you could think of Apple Lossless as being equivalent to taking a digital camera RAW image (the CD) and compressing it in a ZIP file, whereas AAC or MP3 could be thought of as the equivalent of JPEGs (i.e. lossey).

I suspect most of those griping against Apple Lossless really are doing so more as an anti-Apple attitude rather than a genuine difference in quality.

This discussion http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t39551.html seems to confirm it is full CD quality just like WAV and AIFF.

Yes, in theory you could take artwork from sources other than the iTunes Store, convert it to the proprietary Apple .itc format, and store it in the right folder. However the file names and folder names are very complex and bear no obvious (to a human) relationship to the album or track names. As a result it is not practical to do this and I have heard of no one doing it successfully.

*in theory you could take artwork from sources other than the iTunes Store, convert it to the proprietary Apple .itc format, and store it in the right folder. However the file names and folder names are very complex and bear no obvious (to a human) relationship to the album or track names.*
It's not as simple as simply putting it the artwork folder.
The iTunes database needs to be updated to include the artwork.

As a result it is not practical to do this and I have heard of no one doing it successfully.
It is doable (on the Mac).
See this -> A better way to get cover art into iTunes database

Interesting program! I only looked briefly at it, but I see no reason why it wouldn't work on Windows as well. You would just have to install python. I plan on testing this later tonight 🙂

I have looked at all scripts & stuff but I haven't actually tried it yet.

I just tested the Python scripts on my Windows XP box with Python 2.5.1 and iTunes 7.1.1.5. It worked fine.

FYI, the "hosts" file on Windows is in<pre>C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\</pre>

I was able to "Get Album Artwork" for a test WAV file. I should note that it appears you must define at least song Name, Artist, and Album before iTunes will even attempt to download artwork.

I'll test iTunes 7.2 tonight; but I don't plan on testing 7.4. A comment on the macosxhints page seems to indicate that 7.4 doesn't work with the script. And I don't plan on updating to 7.4; I'm happy with 7.2!

The process also works with iTunes 7.2.0.35 (WinXP, Python 2.5.1)

Hi All - I use WAV as I hear a better sound through my system than Apple Lossless end of. I have no axe to grind or soapbox underneath me. It just sounds better. So I have PC / XP / NAS and 15,000 or so songs. iTunes I love it is intuative and just looks right. However I want to use Album Art. Now sometimes I get artwork with WAV and sometimes I don't. I can't nail down to a why and when. So I know Apple can do this but don't understand why it doesn't?

My version of iTunes is current btw.

49scream wrote:
Hi All - I use WAV as I hear a better sound through my system than Apple Lossless end of.

No, I don't believe you. They both produce identical sound. If they sound different to you, it is all in your head (i.e you are delusional). Please seek medical attention.

Robert I bet you really would be upset if I told you that vinyl wipes the floor with anything on a Mac or PC that I have ever heard. Believe me after 20-odd years of hi-fi I've owned quite a bit of kit from the mundane to the high end, from transistors to valves, vinyl tape CD, horn speakers I could go on. I hear a better sound. Its a fact and no delusion. If you disagree fine thats your opinion this is mine.

I have taken copies of a well recorded CD via various mp3 bitrates - AAC - Apple Lossless and WAV. WAV wins: not by a large margin I'll grant you but it does.

I'm all for a healthy debate but do we really have to descend into the pit of insults? We just differ.

You are comparing the filesusing the exact same hardware and the exact same software, correct?
If you play WAV on WMP and ALAC on iTunes, there will almost always be a difference.

Yes same set up and config for everything. The PC - iTunes - Hifi is all the same. It's quite a good experiment. Try it you might have a different view. Last time I did this was with a couple of mates who are graphic designers and also hifi buffs. They did the same thing on thier high spec Macs and hooked it up to a really high end rig. They heard the same. They preferred WAV. Even Mrs 49scream who is known to question the amount of £'s I've spent on music & hifi down the years can hear the difference. You might not. Some people prefer speakers with a huge bass response some like speakers that image well. It's just personal preferences.

*Try it you might have a different view*
I have no view one way or the other. I was only commenting on the setup.
Someone else (a 20+ year audio engineer) posted about how AAC extremely messed up was all messed up but he forgot he had the iTunes Sound Enhancer & the EQ turned on.

Hi Chris - no straight out of iTunes / soundcard without any EQ gimmickry. I got one of the first generation CD players in the mid 80's and some of the CD's transfered from analogue master tapes sounded truely awful. The reason was that the engineers kept all the EQ settings from vinyl. That is why some original CD's have now been re-issued and remastered with the correct EQ settings. They sound 10x better for it. Now you could play devils advocate here and say thats because the record company's want to sell you the same album two or three times!

I really posted to share my irritation with iTunes not letting Album Art work for WAV files. I don't know why? If you look at the attached link you will see that it can be done. Its just that I can't do this for all WAV files?

http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/ee46/49scream/WAV.jpg

*I don't know why?*
Then please read from the beginning of this topic.

The WAV file in your link does not have artwork in the ID3 tags.
WAV files do not have ID3 tags for artwork.

iTunes can put artwork for a file in the artwork folder and it is linked via iTunes library file. This was added in iTunes 7 I believe, when Apple acquired Coverflow and incorporated it into iTunes.

If the album artwork is available in via iTunes, it will be added to iTunes.
If you move the song file, it will not have any artwork.

If you paste the artwork into AIFF, Apple Lossless, MP3, or ALAC, it will be in the ID3 tags. When you move the file somewhere else, the artwork goes with it because it is part of the file.

Select one of your WAV files, get info, click the Artwork tab and try & delete the artwork.