[robenco18]

Hey,

I have been using Foobar2000 for awhile now. I extract the files, then I convert them to .wav form. then apple lossless form and put them in my itunes library. I have a lot of boxed sets like this and I'm realizing that Foobar2000 does not keep the track tags or the artists tags. Just he title of piece. When I have a 27 cd boxed set of Shostakovich's works having the track numbers there helps immensely. Is there any other program like Foobar2000 that keeps the track tags and artist tags? Or is there something I need to do within FooBar2000 to make this possible. Thank you!

 

[l1lJ]

Normally, waves don't have tags in them unfortunately. What you should do is extract them into flac first, not wave and then convert them to alac or aiff.

 

[Dusty Chalk]

EAC.

EDIT: Actually, since you're putting them in Apple Lossless in your iTunes library, why don't you just use iTunes?

 

[robenco18]

alright.

well for the life of me i can't figure out how to install the extra components. I want to install the .ape file type and the ALAC file type and I can't select it as one of my options...any ideas? it's in the components folder...

 

[Dusty Chalk]

Not a clue, sorry, I thought you meant by "extracted" from CD's.

 

[Ham Sandwich]

Import the CUE file in Foobar. Have Foobar convert the tracks to FLAC. Foobar will copy the info in the CUE file to the tags in the FLAC files. Converting to WAV files loses the info because WAV files don't have tags.

I don't know if Foobar can convert directly to ALAC and do the tagging. I always use FLAC and have no experience with ALAC.

 

[robenco18]

I understand that but when I try to convert them to .flac I have to show it the .flac file. These files are .ape files so I can't select any of them when I do .flac. I want to add another option to the converter and I don't seem to be able to do that.

 

[Ham Sandwich]

Try using J. River Media Jukebox or J. River Media Center. Jukebox and Media Center can read in a CUE and split it into tracks, similar to Foobar. It should be able to handle CUE files that are compressed with APE. The lead developer at J. River is the guy who wrote Monkey's Audio so APE support in J. River products is pretty good.

I think that will work. ALAC support in JR Media Jukebox and JR Media Center is poor. So you'll have to convert the tracks to FLAC or WMA Lossless rather than directly to ALAC. If your eventual goal is to be able to import the files to iTunes then WMA Lossless will be better. I believe iTunes for Windows can handle WMA Lossless.

 

[robenco18]

Thank you. It's not the reading the .ape cue files that is a problem. I can do that with foobar2000 too. I want to then extract them (convert?) them to .ape form so I can then convert that to ALAC using another converter. I could convert the files to .wav but I would lose all my tags besides the titles. I have a 90 cd box set in .ape form and there is no way I want to lose the track tags for all of those discs. Understand what I am saying? Hope I'm getting this across...

 

[Ham Sandwich]

I think I understand what you are trying to do. You've got CUE files compressed using APE. You want to end up with individual tracks in ALAC format while keeping the tag info from the CUE files.

Try it with J. River Media Jukebox (JRMJ).

Import or play the CUE file in JRMJ.
You can do this by right-clicking the CUE file in Explorer and selecting the option to add the file to Playing Now.
Go to the Playing Now view in JRMJ.
Select all the individual tracks from the CUE file that are listed
Right-click >> Library Tools >> Convert Format...
In the Convert Files dialog click the "Change" button to change the file format used
In the Options dialog select "Encoding"
There are options there to select the encoder and the encoder settings
Select "Windows Media" for the encoder
For the encoder settings select "Lossless Mode"
Click OK and start the conversion
You should end up with WMA Lossless files that are properly tagged.

I believe you can import WMA Lossless files directly into iTunes for Windows. From there you can convert to ALAC.

That should work. I haven't tried it all the way through to guarantee.

You could do it in bulk mode too instead of doing one CUE file at a time. Import all the CUE files into JRMJ (you may need to change the import settings in JRMJ so that it will automatically import CUE files). Select all the tracks and convert them all in one batch.

 

[robenco18]

Awesome. Thank you so much!

 

[SiRuI]

Although I am new here, I can tell you how I am going to do it:

1. Load Cue tracks into foobar and have it convert them to Flac track by track. The converted tracks will be tagged by foobar. Remember not to use any DSPs while converting.
2. If you want to convert individual flacs to ALAC, use dBPoweramp (you may need to download the plugin first). It does the conversion very fast and keeps all tags.
3. Now you have your individual ALAC tracks with tags. Import those to iTunes and you are done!

Alternatively, if you are using Mac, you may use Max to convert them directly to individually tagged ALACs.