Topic: xACT help

[breakonthru]

looking to help a friend track and tag some wavs from DATS
hes a mac user

many are 44.1K so it would be useful to have them be SBE compliant

is there an equivalent to CDwav for tracking? if not, does it work under wine?

seems that xACT is a must for tagging. are there any tutorials or screenshots for xACT?

im flying blind on support for him absent setting up macos in a docker

[aaronji]

http://xact.scottcbrown.org/release-notes.html

[al w.]

I use Audacity to track. See this: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/splitting_a_recording_into_separate_tracks.html

Then xACT to convert those files to FLAC. This is pretty self-explanatory

You can also tag in xACT. The "load track names from file" feature (under the File menu) is useful here

[checht]

^ second this.

I use Audacity for all slicing/dicing/outputting of lots of shows.
Audacity can directly output flacs, and can tag using edit:edit metadata.

xACT is great for FFPs, file name changing, and is an audio swiss army knife.

[al w.]

Audacity can directly output flacs

TIL! Thanks for the heads up. I never even considered trying this

[breakonthru]

can you control the flac binary that xact uses? will likely be using an older version of audacity

[breakonthru]

http://xact.scottcbrown.org/release-notes.html

yes ive read that, but a few screenies would help a bunch

[checht]

can you control the flac binary that xact uses? will likely be using an older version of audacity

You likely could find an old xACT version, but why?
Flac is flac, doesn't matter what version of Audacity you use, xACT will work fine.
I just moved from Audacity 2.4.2 to 3.0, no issues w xACT.

[breakonthru]

oh that should have said Audacity, not xact, as in can an older version of audacity(when it was open-source) be told to use flac 1.4.3. i see xact already has current flac version

[scb]

seems that xACT is a must for tagging. are there any tutorials or screenshots for xACT?

im flying blind on support for him absent setting up macos in a docker

While I'm very biased, I like to think that for the things we do, xACT is pretty self explanatory

For tagging, drop the files on the file list, select all the files in the file list (on the Tagging tab, you have to select the files you want to tag/view tags for), put the track names in the window that pops up when you check "auto name", fill out the rest of the shared fields (artist, album, etc) and then tag.

it can try to load track names from an info file, but that kind of assumes you're using some sort of standard text file (and that your text file is created. I don't create my text file until xACT gives me the track names and times in the "shntool" tab with the "len for fileset" option)

edit:
my normal routine:

1. util tab > batch rename. drop the files in there, type in a filename prefix ("artist2024-04-04t") and it'll rename everything in order with t01, t02, t03, etc
2. convert files to flac, with verify and create ffp checked.
3. tag
4. shntool tab for "len for fileset" which outputs the track names and times that I put in the info file

[al w.]

oh that should have said Audacity, not xact, as in can an older version of audacity(when it was open-source) be told to use flac 1.4.3. i see xact already has current flac version

Audacity is still open source, btw

https://www.audacityteam.org/FAQ/#is-audacity-open-source

[RyanJ]

is there an equivalent to CDwav for tracking? if not, does it work under wine?

I use Fission. It is super fast like CDwav. Everything else is just too cumbersome.

https://rogueamoeba.com/fission/

[breakonthru]

is there an equivalent to CDwav for tracking? if not, does it work under wine?

I use Fission. It is super fast like CDwav. Everything else is just too cumbersome.

https://rogueamoeba.com/fission/

Great rec thanks

[grawk]

good reminder.  I haven't used it in years, but my license is still valid.