manage multiple folders add metadata advanced Q

I suspect you need to reinstall iTunes. Right-click on the installer and use Run as administrator when you do so. This should allow the iTunes automation server to be registered properly. See Troubleshooting issues with iTunes for Windows updates for further help if required.

tt2

Are the .wav files that you are trying to import organized in artist and album subfolders, or is the information about artist and album coded for in the filename in some fashion?

tt2

Some of the things you say you want in your original post are not possible, but there should be a way to add your content to your library and bring it into some kind of order.

iTunes has two settings that define the behaviour when content is added to the library. Enable the menu bar if necessary with Ctrl+B then use Edit > Preferences > Advanced. The Keep... option tells iTunes to rearrange files inside the media folder when tag information changes, or if necessary when adding files to the library that are already inside the media folder. Copy... tells it to make copies of any files that are outside the media folder.

If iTunes copies or moves files added that are in .wav format, then they end up in the Unknown Artist\Unknown Album folder with their original filename, which becomes the track name. If you disable both Keep... and Copy... options you can safely add the content to the library without changing the filepaths. Once that it done you can use a script called TagFromFilename to fill in the details from the path. It expects to find tracks in the following format:

..\<Album Artist>\<Album>\[D-]## <Name>[ - <Artist].<Ext>

where [D-] is an optional leading disc number, and [ - <Artist>] allows for an optionally different artist when the artist isn't the same as the album artist.

Once you have the songs catalogued in iTunes with the correct metadata you can convert to Apple Lossless or AIFF, both of which carry a full tag to preserve the data and are also lossless formats, or you can convert to mp3 at your preferred bitrate. I would suggest you start with your .wav files located outside of the media folder, then any converted files will be created inside it, and it will be easy to remove the links to the originals once the conversions are complete. You can then archive the originals in case you ever need to revisit them, particularly if you are going to convert to mp3 since this is a lossy format.

See the user tip Make a split library portable for some background on the usual layout of an iTunes library, and how to rearrange things if they aren't in the standard form.

tt2

The reason for unchecking the boxes (one would do depending on where the files are when you start) is to prevent iTunes from discarding the information in the filepath that we want the script to have access to later. Once iTunes has the correct information about artist/album artist, album, track/disc numbers and track name then it doesn't matter. When your library is fully organized you will probably want both options set again.

Sorting by date added lets you import a bunch of tracks, convert them and then locate the imports for removing. Alternatively add the files you are going to convert to a playlist before the conversion, then in that playlist use Ctrl+A to select all items, and Shift+Delete to remove them from the playlist and the library at the same time. You can also expose the file kind in the songs list so you can see which tracks are in which format or make smart playlists to capture those with specific properies.

The script simply takes the two folders above the media file and assigns the lower one as the album name, and the one above that as the album artist and also the artist unless the is a trailling value in the track name. You can either correct beforehand or make sense of the album artist called something like Wav Albums after the fact. If all of your albums were in, say, \<Album Artist> - <Album>\ folders I might have suggested making a tweak to the script, but if there is some inconsistency now then it is probably best if you manually sort things into an appropriate structure.

tt2

New iTunes downloads, rips or conversions will automatically go into the standard layout. If you're going to carry on ripping to vinyl first then leave at least one of the options off depending on where you are placing the files that you are going to import to iTunes. Ripping to AIFF or Apple Lossless could possibly save some effort on reapplying metadata.

tt2