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Topic: wvgain converts ID3v1 tags to APE; can it be made to keep them as ID3? (Read 5974 times) previous topic - next topic
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wvgain converts ID3v1 tags to APE; can it be made to keep them as ID3?

Hello,

I have recently used wavpack to increase the sound volume of some wv-files. I observed that the ID3V tags of the files were converted to ape tags - which I do not like at all. Is there a possibility to maintain the tag format? In the user documentation for wavgain there are no command line switches at all that have something to do with tags...


wvgain converts ID3v1 tags to APE; can it be made to keep them as ID3?

Reply #1
The reason this is done is that replaygain information cannot be stored in ID3v1 tags, so I copy the metadata over to the APEv2 tags and use them for the replaygain values.

The only alternative would be to have both APEv2 and ID3v1 tags on the file (with the ID3v1 tag last). This is read correctly by the WavPack library, but a lot of other programs will probably never even see the APEv2 tags, so there could be trouble (I don't know if foobar handles this case, for instance).

Is there some reason you need the ID3v1 tags? They really are not the preferred tag for WavPack files.

wvgain converts ID3v1 tags to APE; can it be made to keep them as ID3?

Reply #2
> Is there some reason you need the ID3v1 tags?

Not really. I'm simply used to them and they serve my purposes.
But your answer seems very important for me in another respect. Do I understand correctly that WvGain does not modify the data values but adds some metadata to the ape tags? This would be different to WaveGain (http://wiki.themixingbowl.org/WaveGain). Does this mean that an audio CD burnt from these WavPack files would not be affected by these changes in sound volume? Sorry if this is a silly question...

wvgain converts ID3v1 tags to APE; can it be made to keep them as ID3?

Reply #3
It's not a silly question at all, and yes, you understand correctly.

WvGain writes the replaygain information to the APEv2 tag to tell players (that observe the tag) to change the gain of the playback. It does not modify the audio data at all (if it did, it really could not be called "lossless" anymore, for one thing).

As to whether CDs burned from these files would have modified volume, that depends on what the burner is set up to do. My guess would be that the best ones would have an option to observe the replaygain tags for burning (which would be nice for "mix" CDs), but don't do it by default.