What's the mystery with tagging WAV files? Options

[Hellosailor]

I really have tried searching online, and everyone seems to agree that it is impossible to tag a WAV file with any standard information. Not to argue about what "tag" means...but if you rip a cd with Windows Media Player, WMP embeds artist, track number, track title, and other information apparently in the head of the wav files. Other tools embed it in the tail of the file, so there are at least two conflicting ways to do this. And my attempts to use a hex editor and do it the hard way haven't been pretty, or effective.

So, what does it take (don't say "impossible" because it obviously is done by WMP) to enter the artist, title, track, etc. information in a WAV file in a way that both WMP and other tools will recognize it?

Are there really NO TOOLS AT ALL that can do what the clunker from Microsoft has done for so many years?

[Antonski]

There is no mystery. The specification allows for storing of data chunks either in the beginning or the end of file. However, most application use either the first or the second approach.
There is also a list of standard chunks defined by few specifications.
Most audio editors use (limited list of) chunks for storing metadata in wavs, just because they work mainly with wav files as a source.
Most audio players do not support wav chunks.
If you want to see an intelligent autio player/organizer, which support chunks in the beginning and the end of file, as well as UTF-8/system codepage switching, which treats the wav "tags" in the same way as all other tag formats, try MusicBee.
~~

[lvqcl]

Audacity can write WAV files with INFO tags. dBpowerAMP Music Converter can do this too.

[db1989]

This is probably baseless speculation, but are you certain WMP doesn't simply store that info in its database, not the WAV files?

[Rio]

Audiograbber also had the ability to store tags for its ripped WAVs, but its for its own use for future encodings. IIRC the tags are appended at the end of the WAV. Other software may have trouble of playing these WAVs with tags.

[lvqcl]

By the way: WMP 12 writes 'LIST' chunk first, then 'fmt ' chunk. Both Audacity and dMC do the opposite: 'fmt ' chunk first, then 'LIST'. Probably that's why WMP cannot read tags from these files.

(usual advice: use lossless formats with proper tagging support)

[Hellosailor]

Thanks, all. I will look at some of those suggestions but can tell you that WMP does indeed store info in the WAV file, at the top of the file. And it does not recognize anything that Audacity (1.2.x, the non-beta version) stores in WAV files, unless there's some option I haven't found yet on that. More to follow.

[Roseval]

In case of WMP11:
Only when ripping a CD to WAV a couple of RIFF Info Tags are written.
You can't change them afterwards.
The tags are:
IART (artist)
INAM (title)
IPRD (product)
IGNR (genre)
ITOC (?)
ITRK (track number)

Don't know if this is changed in WMP12 as I stopped using WMP