tequilaparrothead 2 Posted January 10, 2020 Share Posted January 10, 2020 (edited) I have a meticulously curated library of wav files and want to use Emby reading only my embedded tags. Of course, I know that wav has it's non-standard issues with metadata, but I've always had good luck. I rip all of my music using dBpoweramp. My music players like MusicBee and others read my wav tags wonderfully. My biggest issue with using Emby is that it is not reading the Album Artist tags on my wav files. For example, on compilation albums where I have Album Artist as Various Artists, Emby is reading the Artist tag on each track and listing each individual track artist as an album artist. To put it even simpler, my Emby Album Artist view and Artist view are exactly the same regardless of what I have as the Album Artist tag on my files. I do have all of my music files organized with each artist having their own folder and each album having it's own folder within that artist folder, so Emby at least seems to present things okay in the Folder view...but I would like to be able to use the Album Artist and Artist views too. Am I just out of luck because I am using wav files or is there a scenario in which Emby is able to read the Album Artist tags on wav files? Thanks. Edited January 10, 2020 by tequilaparrothead Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37112 Posted January 10, 2020 Share Posted January 10, 2020 Hi, are you on windows? Does windows explorer show the album artist? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tequilaparrothead 2 Posted January 10, 2020 Author Share Posted January 10, 2020 (edited) I am on a brand new computer with Windows 10. Up until now, I was on Windows 7 with dBpoweramp installed and the Windows Explorer did indeed read/show Album Artist in that column in the explorer window. Now I am newly on Windows 10 also with dBpoweramp installed and the now called File Explorer Album Artist column for my wav files is blank. So my answer to your question is "no", W10 file explorer is not reading the Album Artist tag. I pretty much feared stuff like this which is why I waited until the very end to update to a W10 machine...UGH! Edited January 10, 2020 by tequilaparrothead Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PenkethBoy 2063 Posted January 10, 2020 Share Posted January 10, 2020 Win 10 does not read the AlbumArtist Tags via Windows explorer in Wav files but does with MP3 Have you tried mp3Tag - reads wav files fine - to check what tags you have? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37112 Posted January 10, 2020 Share Posted January 10, 2020 We use ffprobe, so i guess what it comes down to is whether or not that sees it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tequilaparrothead 2 Posted January 10, 2020 Author Share Posted January 10, 2020 Luke...I read that in the forum and was trying to play around with ffprobe to see how it read my files but I'm not a programmer and so was struggling a bit. Would you be able to give me the language to copy/paste to run it on a file? I'm sure this is probably one of those W10 "enhancements" where it locked down the explorer shell or whatever the correct terminology is and that has restricted reading the Album Artist tag for my wav files. I know it will read them for Flac files but I would really like to keep these files as wav if at all possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37112 Posted January 10, 2020 Share Posted January 10, 2020 Can you provide a sample file for testing? thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tequilaparrothead 2 Posted January 10, 2020 Author Share Posted January 10, 2020 Hi PenkethBoy, My dBpoweramp software has a tag editor, batch music converter and many other functions built in, so I just always use that. I have been meticulous when ripping all of my CD's, so I rarely have to modify the tags. Up until my switch to W10, I could see all of the tags in Explorer view columns and still see all of them in my MusicBee music player, etc...MusicBee reads all of the wav tags with no problem as well as other music players that I am aware of. I can't honestly remember how Emby handled my stuff in W7 and quite honestly getting the Emby server up was very buggy for me after one of the updates. My CD library contains over 3800 albums, over 49,000 tracks, and over 144 days of non-stop round the clock worth of music....all in wav format. Every wav file on my computer I personally ripped and personally tagged pre-rip, so I'm pretty good there. (I have never really downloaded any music so I haven't had a need to populate tags on my music files after the fact. While my digital library is tagged with 639 individual Album Artist, I have 3644 individual Artist tags as I have a lot of compilation albums. So you can see that from a playing music standpoint, the Album Artist tag can be very important in the sorting of my library. It's possible that the Folder View will have to be my saving grace as all of my compilation albums are in a Various Artists folder. Make sense? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tequilaparrothead 2 Posted January 10, 2020 Author Share Posted January 10, 2020 Luke...yes, I will upload a file so you can work with it. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PenkethBoy 2063 Posted January 10, 2020 Share Posted January 10, 2020 (edited) Just tested and ffprobe does not read - AlbumArtist or Album Artist tags from a wav file although there is an error/warning of "Discarding ID3 tags because more suitable tags were found." and as seen by mp3tag BabyElephantWalk60.zip Edited January 10, 2020 by PenkethBoy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tequilaparrothead 2 Posted January 10, 2020 Author Share Posted January 10, 2020 Well, I do know that in Emby, if I click on a track to manually "Edit Metadata", the Emby tag editor reflects the Artist tag in the Album Artist tag as well. In other words, Emby shows Album Artist tag populated with the Artist tag value....they are exactly the same. I'll upload a file and some screenshots in a couple of hours...gotta run out and deliver dinner to my parents. Will be just a little while but I'll be sure to do it tonight. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PenkethBoy 2063 Posted January 10, 2020 Share Posted January 10, 2020 Yes if an Album Artist is not read from the file - Emby copies it across Which is what its doing in your case Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tequilaparrothead 2 Posted January 11, 2020 Author Share Posted January 11, 2020 I'm currently testing Emby with a limited library in case there was any chance of my tags being modified or anything like that. Here is a copy of an example file from a Various Artist compilation album. http://www.mediafire.com/file/v6zq3c5ks2zd1o0/Lindsey_Buckingham_Back_To_The_Future_02-_Time_Bomb_Town.wav/file Please let me know if that doesn't work. Here are the tags as viewed in my tag editor: And here is how it shows in my Emby "Edit Metadata" screenshot: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tequilaparrothead 2 Posted January 11, 2020 Author Share Posted January 11, 2020 This is basically how my MusicBee player looks with Album Artist view...as you can see it identifies 594 albums with the Various Artists album artist tag. Honestly, I am just trying to get my Emby to behave as close as possible to my MusicBee player as I can.MusicBee reads all of the wav tags. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37112 Posted January 11, 2020 Share Posted January 11, 2020 Why not convert to flac? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tequilaparrothead 2 Posted January 11, 2020 Author Share Posted January 11, 2020 (edited) Really never needed to. Storage is cheap. Have been mostly using my digital music thru my desktop system which runs thru a preamp and JBL studio monitor speakers...sounds great. Didn't want to add compression, even lossless compression, to the equation if I didn't have to. With the use of dBpoweramp and the music players I have used, I've never had any problems. Just finally got some flat screen TV's this past year and so trying to stream it to another room or device is something new for me. Plus, with 50,000 tracks now, I'm reluctant to dive into a conversion of all of those files. The true bottom line though is really that I like to feel that having the files in as uncompressed digital format as possible with as little "processing" upon playback as possible is the best way to go. I may still have to bite the bullet, I don't know. What I know is that my focus is just being able to play my existing music library that I have purchased CD by CD. Just not one to migrate to streaming services like so many others. I come from a time where physical product means something, whether it be my 70/80's vinyl or my CD collection from 1985 to present. Guess I'm just a dinosaur. Edited January 11, 2020 by tequilaparrothead Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PenkethBoy 2063 Posted January 11, 2020 Share Posted January 11, 2020 cant test the file you uploaded as permission denied Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37112 Posted January 11, 2020 Share Posted January 11, 2020 Yea i get it, ideally you should not have to convert your files and i hate having to ask you to do that. I'm just trying to offer a practical answer that will help you today. Given that ffprobe doesn't read those tags, we'd have to either look at adding that support ourselves, or embed other software so that we can get it. Neither of those are things that would happen overnight, so that's the only reason I suggested converting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tequilaparrothead 2 Posted January 11, 2020 Author Share Posted January 11, 2020 (edited) Hey PenkethBoy...I think MediaFire is blocking it because it's reading it as a wav file.What file sharing site can I post it to so that won't block it as a music file? I can't insert directly here, right?...I have to post it on a site to then be accessed from here? Edited January 11, 2020 by tequilaparrothead Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PenkethBoy 2063 Posted January 11, 2020 Share Posted January 11, 2020 put the file in a zip and attach here would be best Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tequilaparrothead 2 Posted January 11, 2020 Author Share Posted January 11, 2020 Luke...I appreciate your comments. The music players like MusicBee and also I think MediaMonkey, Foobar, JRiver, etc that are reading these wav tags...how are they doing it? Is that a lot of work? Thanks for your responses! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37112 Posted January 11, 2020 Share Posted January 11, 2020 There's lots of different ways to do it, and the ways we would do it are what I just outlined. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tequilaparrothead 2 Posted January 11, 2020 Author Share Posted January 11, 2020 Penketh Boy...are you able to test this one? Lindsey Buckingham Back To The Future 02- Time Bomb Town.zip Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PenkethBoy 2063 Posted January 11, 2020 Share Posted January 11, 2020 yes - as already defined ffprobe is not reading most of the song info from a wav file ffprobe see's - not much mp3tag sees the info fine So - if it was me - i would convert to flac or another lossless format - as manually editing metadata in emby for thousands of files is a non starter Remember the "Album Artist" field is filled in by Emby - because Artist is copied to Album Artist if Emby does not see an Album Artist tag in the metadata it gets from ffprobe - and thats why you dont get "Various Artists" in the metadata for the song 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PenkethBoy 2063 Posted January 11, 2020 Share Posted January 11, 2020 Note: dont use ffmpeg to convert the files as ffmpeg cannot read the metadata correctly either tl;dl - wav file specification does not support modern id3 tags - uses an old format (not supported anymore?) if you are interested https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/7579 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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