Hi.

I have about 5000 tracks of classical music and I would like to have multiple values fields (performers, instruments etc.).
Some months ago, wanted to go lossles and not knowing anything else, I ripped all my CDs in WMA. WMP seemed to support the multiple values...
Then I discovered that WMP search feature was broken and you couldn't select a file querying for two different values in the same field, then I discovered that Foobar supports it so I switched to FB (and I'm enjoying the change) but...., but....., it seems that this support with WMA files is broken (or is a WMA problem).
In the forums I was hinted to convert to another lossless format particularly one with APE tags support so I made up my mind to go to WavPack (as Flac has it's own tagging).
Now come the questions:

1) Is it the right way?

2) Is there anything I have to know before I start converting 250 GB of music? (There are other 5000 jazz and modern music tracks)

3) Is it safe do the convertion with FB?

4) Is it safe for ALL my tags (I have already put many hours work into tagging)?

5) Is it safe doing it at once with ATA hard disks? (I read they are not meant to work for many hours in a row)

Sorry for the many questions.

Thanks for the time you'll spend to answer.

For sure.



I don't think so...



yes



I suppose it is. As far as I know, foobar copies the tags verbatim to the output format. Dunno if it can read WMA tags though.



It's probably very safe, but why not let the disk take a break and do 5 overnight batches of 50Gb? Just to be in the safe side... unless you are awfully hurried, of course.

I only have a little knowledge about WMA Lossless, but converting it to another format is working perfectly with foobar2000. Just take care and disable all ReplayGain/DSP options in diskwriter menu.
Tags should be transfered without problem.

But I think that you should take some files of your library, convert them, and check the presence of your tags. It's probably not totally useless to perform a small bit-to-bit comparison with your first encodings, just to be sure that nothing wrong occured (wrong setting, or something like that).

You must also note two things:
1/ if your WMA files have ReplayGain values, they won't be transfered to your .wv files
2/ there is no way to automatically delete input files with foobar2000 & WavPack (or to be correct, I didn't found it when I convert my APE library to WavPack format).

hmmm, there is maybe one point ... When I use EAC->WMA lossless I lose the tracknumbers while converting with FB. When I use dbpowerAMP instead of FB the tracknumbers are convertet perfectly. Maybe just my configuration ...

Thanks to all for the answers.

Which settings are better?

Doesn't the -d option of WavPack work in FB? If it works, it's -hd or -dh or -h d or what else?

Is there a way to print on paper the tags and their content?

I ask that because, thinking to do a test with a couple of albums, I'd like to print the wma text content and the relative wavpack one for an easy check side by side.

Talking about wma tagging, just out of curiosity I tell you a thing:

I originally ripped my CDs with WMP
Then, looking for a better player that WMP (easy task one may say...) I came across to Winamp. In spite that with WMP I could see all the tags correctly, and with dbPowerA tips too, WA couldn't load many of them if I disabled all the guessing.
There was a lot of WM/... field names and even FB couldnt load that infos. I had to remove them and then create new fields. Luckily, the missing infos were album and tracknumber at most so I could repopulate them easily.
The funny thing about it was that if I had I WM/albumtile field, FB seemed unable to write into the file a newly created album field: first remove WM/... then add the similar one.
Isn't it weird?

The -d option doesn't work with Foobar because it doesn't create an intermediate .wav file (and WavPack cannot convert directly from any other format). The option to delete the wma files would have to be in Foobar. You might just do your conversion in smaller batches and delete manually (I would do this anyway just to make sure nothing was going wrong). I think maybe dbPowerAMP can do the conversion (with tags) and delete, but you need to verify that.

There was an option added to the latest beta specifically for converting using Foobar. It probably wouldn't matter for lossless, but it's worth getting to be sure. A description of the feature is here:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....ndpost&p=244938

And the latest beta is here:

http://www.wavpack.com/wp42b3.zip

Good luck!

I started with the first batch and, after a cat nap (sure a big ...cat) I just found out that FB keeps the source files (WMAs) selected, so it's a piece of cake massdeleting them in one click. Of course, I first checked the dirs content to see if each track has been converted.

By the way, I associated the files to FB with windows open with dialog but the FB icos came out black instead of red: shall I have to run the fooassoc to solve this? (I can't try now, second batch is running)

Thanks again to everybody.

Yes, fooassoc will take care of that.

You may need to restart windows to fix the icons.

edit: if you use windows-commander, then they will always show in black. Known problem with windows commander.

I was also annoyed some months ago. I've found an easy solution to delete all source files after conversion: a mass-delete component for foobar2000, which allows to delete (permanently or not) by a simple click.
I think it was this component.
http://pelit.koillismaa.fi/plugins/general.php#81

but why convert??since when foobar cant play wma??

The reasons are stated in the very first post.

Yes, it works fine!

No, don't misunderstand: Foobar can play WMAs as any other format.
Trouble is that it is unable to support the multiple values in the same field when tagging them. I don't know if it's a FB problem or a WMA tagging format one (more likely). All the same, as I really need that feature, having many tracks of classical music, I decided to switch to WavPack. I didn't go to Flac for not delve again in a proprietary tagging format: better stay with APE, I think.

This issue it's only been one more proof that Gates' way is good only for his pockets and MS, thank to their position, are not caring a bit for his customer satisfaction: their player is broken and you have many restrictions using their format with another player. And not talking of customer support: have you ever seen one?