Beat Tagger

[chrismak]

Thought I might share this information with those of you who download from Beatport in WAV format.

I've been looking for a solution that automatically tags my tracks for Traktor without having to convert them into a compressed format.

I've found a cool app called Beat Tagger that does the trick.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/beat-tagger/id418773729?mt=12

It essentially converts your WAV tracks downloaded from Beatport into AIF (still lossless) format, then automagically tags and adds artwork to it.

It turns out that AIF supports ID3 tagging (I had no idea). I'm not sure how OS & device compatibility is impacted, but it works great on OSX with iTunes and Traktor.

[J0rdz]

... or you could just convert to FLAC, which also supports ID3 Tags. Using something like Freerip?

[chrismak]

... or you could just convert to FLAC, which also supports ID3 Tags. Using something like Freerip?

Converting them to FLAC is a good option to get ID3 tag support and save on HDD space without sacrificing quality. The only cost is CPU during decompression/playback.

Does freerip automatically add tag information such as artist, remixer, genre ect... ?

I find beat tagger to be a simple one step solution which kills two birds with one stone. No messing around, just drag and drop your tracks into the app and its done in a few seconds.

[J0rdz]

Converting them to FLAC is a good option to get ID3 tag support and save on HDD space without sacrificing quality. The only cost is CPU during decompression/playback.

Not really. Any half decent computer can handle it.

Does freerip automatically add tag information such as artist, remixer, genre ect... ?

Yes.

And it's Free.

[ChevChelios]

iTunes doesn't support FLAC

[J0rdz]

iTunes doesn't support FLAC

LOL! Fekin serious?!

Yet another reason why iTunes is a bullshit program!

[ChevChelios]

Indeed, makes no sense at all.

[chrismak]

Converting them to FLAC is a good option to get ID3 tag support and save on HDD space without sacrificing quality. The only cost is CPU during decompression/playback.

Not really. Any half decent computer can handle it.

Does freerip automatically add tag information such as artist, remixer, genre ect... ?

Yes.

And it's Free.

I'm not suggesting that a half decent computer can't handle FLAC playback. It still costs CPU, however little.

I haven't compared FLAC vs WAV/AIF performance in Traktor myself. But Traktor is CPU intensive, and I imagine there would be some added latency due to on-the-fly FLAC decompression. How much? Who knows.

It'd be interesting to test this in practice. I'll go about creating a FLAC copy of one of my tracks and see if there's any noticable performance difference in Traktor.

[eggssell]

but if you arent scratching the track then does it really make any audible difference to latency? if your having big latency issues (clicking and freezing) im sure the different formats wouldnt make a diff.

[chrismak]

I compared the performance of Traktor with one of my uncompressed tracks and a FLAC copy. My suspicion was incorrect as it turns out that there is no noticeable difference in performance between the two formats. Impressive!

I had to convert my tracks into FLAC using Freerip on my windows PC since they have no release for OSX. You have to be careful not to install the toolbar suspiciously packaged with adware during the install. Unfortunately freerip doesn't support FLAC tagging. I tried converting my WAV to mp3 to see if the tag info was automatically retrieved online but had no success.

Perhaps another useful tool Windows or Mac users can use is trainspotter.

http://www.tspotter.net/

It sources tag info from discogs and artwork from google. It also handles MP3 & FLAC encoding and key detection.

Has anybody had experience with trainspotter?