i want some way to put cd ripped audio in a different container than wave becase when i encode a wave it doesn't retain any information about the file.

a) Create a cue sheet when ripping containing the information you need (and a player that can use this info).
b) Use some lossless format supporting tags like flac, wavpack, monkey's audio
c) Use foobar2000's database to store tags

does lossless encode faster than alt preset std. if so then that would solve my problems.

depends on what settings you use

flac at -5 will

okay thanks i am going to read up on flac and try it out
peace

Some info on lossless codec compression speed:

http://web.inter.nl.net/users/hvdh/lossless/All.htm

You can put PCM fine into matroska container, and use the new matroska tagging system to store the info you want. From the lossless codecs, only FLAC is supported now, but more will follow ( Wavpack4 or TTA to be next i guess ) ....

MS WAV files allow for extensive tagging, metainformation and lots more (pictures, whatever...) to be embedded into the file. Simplest form is the LIST chunk, that typically holds the author, performer, recorder, album, and similar tags.

Unfortunately, programmers heve been ignoring this to an extent that most software will either ignore or play the data as audio, instead of actively using it...

I know, this doesn't help you. But I had to tell...

Mike.

The kind of "extensive tagging" without unicode support and custom field names ? No, thank you.