Best Way To Backup CDs, import .wav files to Itunes

[diquimbe]

First ever post, and I am probably not all the way up to speed yet. I already have a ton of stuff in Itunes in crappy 128K, and I have decided to finally do it right. I want to backup all of my cd's using EAC because I am guaranteed of a bit perfect copy and not all of my cd's are in the best of shape anymore.

 

I have two questions about this. Once I have the wav files, is there a way to import them into Itunes where it will find the tag info like it will with a CD?

 

Also, as an easy and quick way to play back the files through my stereo I had planned to copy all of my files to an external hard drive so I can hook it up to my PS3. I've tested it, and it works fine but there are limitations. I haven't found a way to make a playlist as of yet, which isn't that big of a deal for me, but what I really want are the ID3 tags. It appears from the little digging I have done that these aren't available for .wav files. Is there any way around that?

 

Any ideas or tips would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks

 

[Olive Empithrie]

Looking at the audio formats recognised by the PS3:

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/742/742009p1.html

 

it seems your options might be limited.

 

The simplest way to achieve all you are wanting to do would be to use the highest bit-rate mp3 available 320kps in EAC rather than WAV. Arguably, most people seem unable to distinguish 320kps from the quality of the original CD. Both iTunes and PS3 would recognise the tags in the mp3 files so all your album and artist information etc. would appear.

 

If you really want to use WAV, I can think of a couple of ways:

 

1. Use iTunes instead of EAC. People like to debate this until the cows come home, but, basically there is nothing at all wrong with the iTunes ripping software and you'll get excellent results.

 

2. If you really want to use EAC then, after using EAC to rip to WAV, you will find that EAC by default stores each album in its own subdirectory. To get these into iTunes you would need to do so one album at a time, so, in iTunes you would import your target directory for that album only: if you have 15 tracks on the album, say, it will show up in iTunes after importing as 15 separate unknown albums (the individual track names will be okay as iTunes will read these off the disk, provided EAC accessed the track information from the Internet when you did your initial rips). You then would select all 15 'unknown albums' at the same time, then fill in the album name and artist fields, after saving it will then appear as one album. Then right click and select get album artwork. If the album is in the iTunes store and the album artist and album title are spelt exactly as they are in the iTunes store, iTunes will grab the artwork. If not, you could get the artwork this way:

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/node/726

 

Important: By default, iTunes 'organises' your files. If you're working with WAV files, you must de-select this option in iTunes. If you let iTunes organise your WAV files, it will lump all of them into one unknown album/artist directory on your hard drive. If this happens, you'll be very upset. :-(

 

Either way, to get these WAV files playing back on your PS3, I think you'd need to accept that you'd be limited to playing one album at a time, i.e., you would navigate to the directory containing the files for the album you want to listen to and select play. Playlists and selecting by Artist, Genre etc. won't normally work with WAV files as you've discovered.

 

As an extra step, you could batch convert your WAV files to mp3, then retag them for playing on your PS3. This would be time consuming though.

 

Olive