Wav to Flac using Dbpoweramp

From reading your post, it looks like you already have dbPoweramp. Also, if I'm reading correctly, you are not sure what tags are. Tags are information that gets attached to an audio file to describe it. (Artist, Title, Year, Album, ets). Tags are also called metadata. It seems simple, and it is, but can be very frustrating if you are not aware of certain things. The biggest problem that people have with tags is confusing them with file names. Like most people you probably have a music folder. Inside that folder is probably folders labelled with artists. Inside artist folders, albums. You get the idea. Thats not, necessarily, what you see in the library view of whatever music player you happen to use. There can be big differences between what you see in your library and what you see in your file system. I know from experience that it can drive you crazy if you are not aware of what is going on.

I will stop here for 2 reasons. 1. You may already know this. If not, I will be glad to continue. 2. You need to decide what you want to do. Some people hear differences between different music file types. Not just from lossy to lossless, but differences between different lossless files like WAV and FLAC. In your case, flacs are much easier to tag but I know some prefer WAV for sound quality. I suggest you experiment to see if you want to change to flac or another file type fist. That will effect what you have to do with regards to tagging your music. Also, some people prefer different music players. It will be good to know what music player you will be using, as well.

Sorry I wasn't able to get to get back to this thread sooner. Thanks to Dtc for saving me a lot of typing, as well. Excellent description of the whole process. All the info in Dtc's post is very accurate. The only thing I can add is a few tips on how to make all this a little easier to implement from a practical standpoint.

As stated above, you can view your music files 2 ways; as a file structure and in a library view in a music player (Metadata). Let me give an example of something I did not too long ago. I imported a bunch of Rolling Stones albums. My file structure was nice and orderly. Main folder was Rolling Stones. Inside were all the albulms. Inside the albums, the songs. In my library view on my music player I had a bunch of different bands (Rolling Stones, The Rolling Stones, Rolling Stones, The). Same thing with Genera (Rock, Classic Rock, Rock & Roll, Rock and Roll). I also had some unknowns, as well. That just means the software was not able to find a match for the music you imported and was not able to tag it. There is nothing wrong with the music files, you just have to tag them manually.

For me, at least, this is the biggest drawback to having the software auto tag. If there is the slightest difference in a field, you have 2 or more fields when there should only be one. The upside is that this is very easy to fix. Instead of going into library view and trying to find everything and relabel it all piece by piece, you use file view. Using my Rolling Stones example, I went from Library view in my music player to file view (You do all this in you music player; just to be clear.) Once in file view, I highlight my Rolling Stones master file, with all the albums in it, and tag certain fields all at once. Its usually just the artist name and genera. Now when I switch back to the library, I can at least get everything in one place so I can see it. From there I can just check each album and fix whatever is not right.

One last thing. Its not a bad idea to have a few different music players. No one player does it all. There is one player I really like to use for tagging. Its called Quod Libet and its free. It also works on Mac, Windows and Linux. Thats what I use for most, if not all of my tagging. Foobar2000 and Clementine are also good choices, as well. The main reason I mention Quod Libet is that its very easy and clear when it comes to switching back and forth between file view and library view. It has a lot of other great tagging features too.

Anyway, that’s where I would start. If I wasn't clear on something, just post and I'll see if I can help.