I’m a DJ with a huge AIFF collection. I prefer Aiff, because it has a good quality and ID Tags, what Wav doesn’t support.
I had one track ripped with itunes from a CD, which was pretty good in Traktor, but a little low in mastering. So I opened Wavelab 9 Elements to put a L2 Maximizer on it and rendered into the same file back as AIFF again. After doing this, NI Traktor started showing me “Warning ID3 Tags could not be read” all the time. This is really annoying as I bought Wavelab mainly for this purpose: To pimp up my Track collection.
I prefer Aiff, because it has a good quality and ID Tags, what Wav doesn’t support.
What “quality” are you speaking about?
What “ID Tags” are you speaking about? Wav supports ID3v2 tags and WaveLab too.
AIFF is almost unused today, as all professional extensions (BWF) have been conceived through the years for the WAV format.
This is why WaveLab has limited support for it.
Especially, there is no conversion from AIFF metadata.
You could start ripping your CDs to WAV in Wavelab, with the CD Text, internet metadata, and metadata transfer to files options selected in the import dialog. Tracktor will read the metadata in those WAV files. Doesn’t really help with your AIFF collection, but just a suggestion.
However Tracktor won’t read Wavelab FLAC metadata for some reason, although it should because all other programs do, but you could ask them why that is if you wanted to rip to Wavelab FLAC.
Since AIFF is somehow a dead format, I would recommend finding a tool that can transform your AIFF files to the more modern WAV format, while preserving the ID tags.
PG, by the way, the Performer (Contributing Artists in Windows Explorer) seems to be missing in the Wavelab CD import to FLAC. Other CD rippers like dbpoweramp include it.
Will Wav also support Cover images lile Aiff?
It‘s broadly used in Apple devices. When I rip wit ituens it‘s default is aiff. I can buy aiff in every dj store like Bandcamp, Beatport etc
When I buy Wav it has no cover image
What‘s your information base on calling it „dead“?
Not sure. I use Logic - never faced any problems though. But in Music Production i‘ve never cared about the metadata in my sample snippets I have to admit
Me and many of my professional Dj Friends are using Aiff. See above some professional DJ Stores, supporting Aiff files. Pioneer CD’s do (professional Dj mixer for sure). Maybe mastering engineers are not using it. But you can’t simply call “dead” what is still in use by so many people and devices.
i agree for the most part, and mastering is sometimes about having to use legacy stuff, like aif and alac, and it should be continued to be supported in a mastering program for that reason. But the metadata for those formats was never included in Wavelab afaik, and we still get by with simply being able to open the files. But If it’s easy at some point to add the metadata support in Wavelab it would be great and make things more complete.
And I would agree aif is not really dead. HD Tracks sells aif, and mixers sometimes mix to aif. Certainly not very often but sometimes. But even if it was dead, a mastering program should support it for legacy imo.
There is some support: WaveLab can read/write AIFF files since WaveLab 1.0.
A full support of the format is not planned, however, as there are higher priorities, nothing but in the file format domain.
See it this way: I don’t think there is today any software that can read AIFF but not WAV.