First track of ripped CDs (in .WAV format) does not display track info (in Windows Ex

I have a strange problem. I ripped my personal CD collection to .WAV as I have the space and thought it was best quality. I used WMP.

Everything ripped fine... for a while, the first song of each album kept 'losing' its track information. I would use the Find Album Info feature of WMP to fix this. Track info currently displays perfect in Windows Media Player Library or when browing using Windows Media Center.

However, if I view the files in Windows Explorer, or use another program like Winamp to play the files (which i generally prefer), the first track of all my ripped CDs in WAV format has no track information, Unknown Album, title, etc... even tho' it displays fine in WMP Library.

I cannot EDIT the track in Windows Explorer, and I can't find a track editor freeware that supports .WAV.

Why? Do I need to re-rip everything in .MP3? Bizarre! This also ruins my ability to copy the files to my phone, as the first track is missing information on copy/conversion.

Stay away from using WMP to rip with, it's not that great or configurable.

I highly recommend using AIMP media player. It's a great player and all I use for audio files. I use the FLAC format as it is lossless, yet a compressed file.

For a link to see how to rip with it, go to: How to Rip CD with AIMP

I use version 2 of AIMP player,

• Multiformat Playback:
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  .MPC, .MTM, .OFR, .OGG, .RMI, .S3M, .SPX, .TAK, .TTA, .UMX, .WAV, .WMA, .WV, .XM
• Output supports
  DirectSound / ASIO / WASAPI
• 18-band equalizer and built-in sound effects
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  Are several users working with one computer? This is no problem!
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  Configure local and global hotkeys as you wish!
• Files search
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• Flexible programm options

Go here to download AIMP 2 plus it is FREE!
AIMP v2.61 Build 583

The page is in Russian, but there's an ENG button at the top right so you can read it in English.

thx for reply. so you're saying I should re-rip my CDs using something other than WMP? Its still a mystery why the first songs are tagged correct in WMP/WMC but not in any other program or Windows Explorer.

I suppose i could download the program you suggested and re-rip with it.

What I've done is just delete the album and re-rip them from my CDs and then set the files to read-only, so hopefully they won't be updated. The re-ripped files all display track information correctly, altho' i understand that .WAV doesn't handle track info very well from doing some brief research on the Internet but... i want to use WMC full screen to browse my CDs by remote control, so its .WAV for me. Still if anyone could explain why this happened...

As for the mystery, WMP maintains it's own file information under your USER directory in AppData\Local|Microsoft\Media Player so when you told it to find album info it likely only updated there. The other tracks that do have info in your other player likely have wave id3v2 info embedded in the RIFF chunk of the wav file.

But as for how to change it, I've never added tag info to wav files. Back when I used wav files I don't think it was possible and now I use mp3 so they are smaller to fit on my mp3 player.

Well, Trainable, I ripped to .WAV for my home computer for good sound, because i have the space. I have a Sony Ericsson phone for my portable player and Sony's software automatically converts the .WAVs to .MP3 for me for the phone.

.WAV is preferable over .MP3 for albums where the tracks fade into each other, e.g., The Moody Blues, .WAV tracks play seamlessly after each other; with MP3 I always notice a lag between tracks which ruins the continuity of the whole album.

After ripping a CD, I use Goldwave to trim the extra silence off the beginning and end of songs (and then MP3Gain to normalize) so I don't really a notice a delay. And I don't have really good speakers so I also don't notice the loss of quality, so mp3s work fine for me but some people prefer lossless codecs like wav or flac.

So whatever works best for you. I just don't have any experience adding tag info to wav files.