Server Version#: 4.87.2
Player Version#:
This is an appeal to the brains behind Plex: PLEASE fix Plex so that it can “read” WAV metadata. I have over 2,000 albums ripped by a Naim Core (my own collection) with re-clocking that I do not want to convert to FLAC, even uncompressed FLAC. I’ve tried, does not sound the same to my ears. Besides, that is a big job.
I want to dump my subscription to Roon, and use PlexAmp, but I cannot as long as Plex can’t do the WAV job.
Many thanks
have you tried AIFF?
also, I’ve read that older Naim server used custom format for WAV tagging, making it difficult to move/convert later … is this the case for your Naim Core?
The core produces a separate XML file with all the metadata in it. Looks dead standard.
Yes, I could rip CDs in AIFF, but unfortunately I’ve already ripped them (all 2,277) so I’m a little reluctant to do that again.
I guess I’ll keep Roon for a while - until Plex gets better.
It wouldn’t take too much work to create a script that ploughs through your WAV collection and converts each item to FLAC via command line.
dBpoweramp has that ability, with bulk convert. One of the best pieces of software I ever bought
from the little I’ve read about it, the xml metadata file used by Naim for WAV files is non-standard and not usable by other platforms
if the WAV files can be accessed/transferred outside of the Naim Core, there are good utilities for batch conversion (like dBpoweramp, noted above) from WAV to AIFF or whatever, but I don’t know if the Naim metadata will be preserved
The files are outside the Naim Core, on a Mac mini as server, accessible by Plex via my QNAP NAS. The accessibility is not an issue, and I do have dbPoweramp, but we are talking about 100,000 WAV files, that is going to be a pain in thence, batch processing or not.
thanks for the extra info … agree, ~ 2k albums is quite a bit (2-3TB stored as WAV?)
if the existing file metadata is a must have, I guess I’m out of alternatives to suggest (other than your original request, of course) … hope you’re able to find a solution 
Thank you for sharing some ideas. Hopefully the Plex devs see these threads and act on them. I am able to create metadata for WAV files, embedded, the same way I embed in FLAC files, readable by other software. Cannot see any technical impediments
From my perspective, that is irrelevant…
What is of relevance is finding a way forwards regardless of how much work it may or may not be.
If it was to take you a few months, or maybe 6 months, or even a year… So what?
I have spent the last 6 years working my way through my video collection converting everything to x265, and because of this, around 95% of my content is formatted in such a way that it takes up approx half the space it did before, and provides better quality to those remote clients that can direct play it.
In other words, it’s a journey!.. And the sooner you start, the sooner you will begin to grow the library that Plex will be able to use.
Irrelevant? I simply do not have that amount of time on my hands …
Computers can do that kind of work largely unsupervised. (As long as they don’t run out of storage space for the converted files, that is.)
Exactly my point… Set it, forget it, check it’s OK, move on…
OK, if I convert to AIFF (I have dbPoweramp) how do I batch insert the metadata? Or don’t I need to? In other words, is there a way to scrape metadata automatically?
I might have missed a point in this thread… but isn’t that exactly what Plex does out-of-the-box? Unless you mean scraping plus writing it back into the file…
If dbpoweramp is currently showing you the metadata which are already in your wav files, then it ought to write these into the converted files as well.
Plex is finding most (98%) of the metadata with the AIFF versions, and the sonic quality is the same according to my ears. I guess a few manually curated Plex volumes ain’t that bad.
Thanks everyone. Converting to AIFF is a good solution for Plex
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Server Version#: 1.32.8.7639, but should affect all version
Player Version#: Not related
This bug seems has already been reported, but no further progress is made, e.g.,
WAV Files (Again) // mod: read metadata from WAV files is one related post.
In short: the Plex bundled FFmpeg has a bug that will incorrectly discard all wav ID3 tags, so we can only rely on Plex’s automatic match or fix it manually.
From the log, in each wav analysis session, the corresponding error is always shown:
The bug itself is fixed by upstream, see cr #9848 (The ID3 metadata obtained in WAV format is missing) – FFmpeg, the patch should be easy to cherry-pick and build. Also, it’s merged and shipped at least on ffmpeg >= 6.0, so it should be easy to fix by apply the upgrade.
I’m not attaching the log since the root cause is so obvious, but if you think it may help, please just reply to me.
