Hi all! I am using dbpoweramp to rip cd's to wav. I then convert the wav files to mp3, without deleting the wav file. I am using lame front end to do that.

The problem is that when I finish converting the mp3 files (into a different directory than the wav files), I lose some tagging info, especially album art. I've tried The Godfather and AV Album Art fixer to try to get the artwork and proper tags back, but to no avail.

Can anyone please help? Thanks!

WAV files don't store tags like all the others. They have RIFF chunks I believe. You have to tag them all yourself. I highly suggest mp3tag since you can batch tag and embed album art. You could always learn to encode through the command line and batch tag that way or you could just rip the CD to mp3, which would keep all the tags and there's no need to convert.

dbpoweramp is the only application that I know of that really addresses tags in WAV files. If it is not doing everything that you want then you are probably stuck with doing the rest manually, unless you can get Spoon to make some enhancements for you.

Thanks all! But what about tagging after I convert the wav to mp3? Or is that not possible because the wav files lack information so that the resulting mp3 files can't be tagged?

The bottom line is that I'm trying to back up my cd collection first, and then converting it to mp3 at 320. What about going from cd-->flac-->mp3? Will tags work then?

cd-->flac-->mp3 should work much better for you. Tagging ability between these formats is much more similar and conversion while preserving tags should be possible.

I'd also recommend you switch to a lossless format instead of wav files. I personally use flac, but there are multiple codecs out there that can do the job for you.

You can also use a program like foobar to convert those wav files you already have to the lossless codec of your choosing. And then foobar's freedb plugin to download the tag info for the newly created files.

The advantages of using a lossless codec is that you will save roughly 40% (sometimes more) of the disk space needed to store raw wav files. You can tag these files, insert album art, and a wide variety of other features depending on the codec you choose.

And as they are lossless you will be able to convert them bit identically back to the original wav source. This allows you to transcode to any other lossless or lossy source you choose.

It will make your life a hell of alot easier.
JXL