How To Edit Properties Of Wav Files

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WAV files are bit more limited, imho, when it comes to tagging than MP3’s for example. You should be able to do this stuff in Explorer (Windows) or Finder (OSX) though. Just make sure you select the right columns to show and then just edit the fields. It can also be done in MP3 tagging progs.

Hello DJ’s,
Recently I bought Serato DJ Pro, and I love it so far. Last week however I wanted to record a mix of mine. After some messing around it was al working and I recorded my mix in a .wav file format. I now have one tiny problem:
How to I change the information (artist, track name, year) in a .wav format.
What do I need to do something like this,
I hope you understand what my problem is and that some of you have a solution.
Tnx for your replay,
DJ Rem
P.S. sorry if I post this topic at the wrong place, I thought this was the best place to go.
DJ Booth would have worked as well, but this fits too.
On topic:
WAV files are bit more limited, imho, when it comes to tagging than MP3’s for example.
You should be able to do this stuff in Explorer (Windows) or Finder (OSX) though. Just make sure you select the right columns to show and then just edit the fields. It can also be done in MP3 tagging progs.
There is a difference between tag info and CD Text though. The latter is what your CD player (in the car for example) shows as album, artist, track info. Never bothered to work it out exactly, but I know that for some tracks that I had tagged correctly, when I burned them to CD that info was suddenly lacking from the audio CD. Could be something in the burning software though.
While in Dutch, you can clearly see all the fields for artist, album, track number, track name, genre and the drop down list (which can be expanded even further) that allows you to show more fields. By double-clicking (slower than usual double-click) in the field you want to change you can enter whatever info you need to.
Hope that helps some.
You can also do all that in ITUNES, well mp3 files anyway, pretty sure it also works with WAV
How to edit information in a .wav file?
Short answer – you don’t. Not really, anyway. WAV format does not support meta-data of any kind. If you want to add meta-data tags to your file, you need to convert it into a format that supports it, such as MP3, FLAC or ALAC.
Besides, you’ll probably want to share your mix, so uncompressed WAV file is unnecessarily large for that.
As found on Wikipedia:
As a derivative of RIFF, WAV files can be tagged with metadata in the INFO chunk. In addition, WAV files can embed any kind of metadata, including but not limited to Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) data or ID3 tags[26] in extra chunks. Applications may not handle this extra information or may expect to see it in a particular place.
Practice dictates a far more limited tag use than MP3 or FLAC for example, you can add metadata like artist, title, album, etc. If you look at my Windows Explorer picture it shows that actual data. If I fill this info in and transfer the track to another PC, the information is available there. Ergo, it must transfer with the track.

Click a frame that contains a sound. Choose Window – Properties – Properties to open the Property inspector, if it isn’t already open. If necessary, expand the Property inspector to its full size.
Step 4: Select an audio effect and adjust its properties Switch to the Effects tab and select an appropriate effect. The AVS Audio Editor program offers a wide range of audio effects, please click here to learn more about available effects. Click the effect button to read the description of the effect and to change its parameters.

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July 03, 2018 in digital music by Dan Gravell

Think of a tag editor and there are a bunch of common options. MP3Tag, Picard, Tag&Rename... but for Windows users there's a lesser known editor that comes for free: Windows Explorer!

It's true that Windows Explorer's tag editing capabilities are not advanced. There's little low level control, no batch editing actions and no automation. But for certain situations, where you just need to make a simple change to a few files, it can be invaluable.

Having low friction solutions to problems is a powerful thing. I thought the same about file format converters, so I wrote this matrix. Here's how you can use Windows Explorer to no-fuss, free tag editing.

Editing MP3 tags in Windows Explorer

Editing your music tags in Windows Explorer is pretty easy. Fire up Windows Explorer, then find your music files. Right click a file and click Properties:

In the resulting dialog box, choose Details and there you have all of your tags:

Editing the tags is now as simple as changing the Value for the field you want to change. Once happy, click OK or Apply.

It's not all that simple...

There's one caveat - the values you are changing don't always end up in the files (see Unmapped below), and sometimes the fields they end up in don't always make sense.

Windows Explorer tag mapping

So I did some research and produced a mapping table so you know which tag each of the properties changes.

Property	MP3	WMA	MP4	FLAC
Description	Title	`TRACK TITLE`	`TRACK TITLE`	`TRACK TITLE`	`TRACK TITLE`
	Subtitle	`SUBTITLE`	`SUBTITLE`	Unmapped	Unmapped
	Rating	`RATING (WMP)`	`RATING (WMP)`	Unmapped	Unmapped
	Tags	Not shown	`CATEGORY`	Unmapped	Unmapped
	Comments	`COMMENT`	`COMMENT`	`COMMENT`	Unmapped
Media	Contributing artists	`ARTIST`	`ARTIST`	`ARTIST`	`ARTIST`
	Album artist	`ALBUM ARTIST`	`ALBUM ARTIST`	`ALBUM ARTIST`	`ALBUM ARTIST`
	Album	`ALBUM`	`ALBUM`	`ALBUM`	`ALBUM`
	Year	`YEAR`	`YEAR`	`YEAR`	`YEAR`
	#	`TRACK`	`TRACK`	`TRACK`	`TRACK`
	Genre	`GENRE`	`GENRE`	`GENRE`	`GENRE`
	Length	[not a tag, taken from audio file header]
Audio	Bit rate	[not a tag, taken from audio file header]
Origin	Producers	Not shown	`PRODUCER`	Unmapped	Unmapped
	Publisher	`PUBLISHER`	`PUBLISHER`	Unmapped	`PUBLISHER`
	Content provider	Not shown	`CONTENTDISTRIBUTOR`	Unmapped	Unmapped
	Media created	Not shown	Unmapped	Unmapped	Unmapped
	Encoded by	Not shown	`ENCODER`	Unmapped	`ENCODER`
	Author URL	`WWWARTIST`	`WWWARTIST`	Unmapped	Unmapped
	Promotion URL	Not shown	`WWWCOMMERCIALINFO`	Unmapped	Unmapped
	Copyright	Not editable	Not editable	Not editable	Not editable
Content	Parental rating	Not shown	`PARENTALRATING`	Unmapped	Unmapped
	Parental rating reason	Not editable	Not editable	Not editable	Not editable
	Composers	`COMPOSER`	`COMPOSER`	`COMPOSER`	`COMPOSER`
	Conductors	`CONDUCTOR`	`CONDUCTOR`	Unmapped	`CONDUCTOR`
	Group description	`CONTENTGROUP`	`CONTENTGROUP`	Unmapped	Unmapped
	Period	Unmapped	`PERIOD`	Unmapped	Unmapped
	Mood	Unmapped	`MOOD`	Unmapped	`MOOD`
	Part of set	`DISCNUMBER`	`DISCNUMBER`	Unmapped	Unmapped
	Initial key	`INITIALKEY`	`INITIALKEY`	Unmapped	Unmapped
	Beats-per-minute	`BPM`	`BPM`	`BPM`	Unmapped
	Protected	Unmapped	Unmapped	Unmapped	Unmapped
	Part of a compilation	`COMPILATION`	`COMPILATION`	`COMPILATION`	`COMPILATION`

Some definitions:

Unmapped: Allows editing and saving, but the results are not stored in the underlying music file.
Not editable: The value is displayed but cannot be edited.
Not shown: The property is not displayed.

We can see that, perhaps not surprisingly, Microsoft's own WMA format is best supported, and the popularity of MP3 means it takes a solid second place in the support stakes. While less well supported, the fact that FLAC works at all is a positive in my book; this wouldn't have been the case a few years ago!

In addition, I tested with a WAV file and an Ogg Vorbis file. The WAV file showed the fields but did not allow them to be edited, despite Microsoft introducing the RIFF format. The OGG file was not even recognised as a music file and offered no extended properties.