Tagging a file with a graphic - What am I doing wrong?

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JonUrban

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OK, I admit it. I'm old and can be stupid at times. The whole idea of tagging is a bit foreign to me, but I get the concept.

I understand the concept, but I can't seem to get it to work with .wav files for the car. So here's the deal:

I have about 10 24/48 5.1/4.0 tunes on a single USB stick and I am using these songs to check out the new Acura RDX with the ELS 3D Audio system. The audio sounds, dare I say "Stunning"?, but being an anal sort, I really would like to see the song graphic on the display instead of the USB insignia.

So, to start with, I tagged a .flac file, Babylon Sisters, using a graphic I got from Google Images of the DTS CD. Good enough for me, and I wanted to verify that the 24/48 .flac files would or would not play. They did not, but that's another story for another post.

I downloaded mp3tag.exe, which appeared to be a good program for this, and it indicates it does wav and flac as well as mp3. I added the image to the .flac file and ran down to the car. Sure enough, the graphic appeared as well as the title and album title, but alas, the file was not recognized by the car. OK, no big deal, but I was psyched that the graphic appeared.
Steely Wont Play.jpg


So then I went to a the 24/48 5.1 wav files and tagged them just the same way I tagged the .flac file. Grabbed some pictures from Google Images to match each song, saved them, and went to the car. NO IMAGES!!

Back to the PC. This time I tried Foobar, right clicked Tagging, Attach Pictures, Front Cover, and attached the picture. If I go to "Manage Attached Pictures", I see that the picture is there and saved. Well, back to the car and nothing - zippo - no picture.

So, am I trying to do something that can't be done? Are .wav files treated differently than .flac's with regards to tagging? Do the .jpg files have to be stored on the USB stick by themselves? Is there a better way or am I just shit out of luck?

It's not a REAL big deal, because the files play and sound amazing (more on that later), but it sure would be nice to show a graphic with the song.

Any help or pointers would be VERY appreciated.
 
I found if the image is bigger than 400 pixels it won’t show up in my car. Try reducing the image size.
 
I found if the image is bigger than 400 pixels it won’t show up in my car. Try reducing the image size.

Thanks. I'll try that. Interestingly enough, the image did show when I tried the .flac file, and that is the same image I used with the .wav version.
 
It’s quite possible it doesn’t support wav extensible files. I think a standard wav can’t be tagged. It needs to be a wav extensible. Someone else may know more?
 
I don't think there's a universally agreed-upon standard for tagging WAV files. There are a couple different methods but, as you've found, they may or may not work in any given situation.
 
I don't think there's a universally agreed-upon standard for tagging WAV files. There are a couple different methods but, as you've found, they may or may not work in any given situation.
Agreed. Also, in some cases, the player software can associate the tags but not embed them. As a result, they will not be transported with the files to another player.
 
Sure but that's why I convert all WAV files to FLAC.

I know, but as of this moment in time, the car does not play .flac files, only .wav. (See post 1 above)

It's supposed to, and I posted to their site about the issue:

ELS FB 7-1-2.jpg
 
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