File Properties and Metadata

Audio files can carry a great deal of information besides the audio itself: the title and artist, cover art, the tempo and key of a loop, broadcast timestamps. Acoustica reads this metadata when it opens a file, lets you edit it, and writes it back when you save.

Choose Edit Properties... from the File menu to open the Edit File Properties window. The window is divided into several tabs, described below.

Which of these fields actually end up in the saved file depends on the file format you save to — Broadcast Wave and Cart data are written into Wave files, while the file tag information is stored in whichever tagging scheme the target format uses.

File tag information

The general descriptive metadata:

• Title
• Artist
• Album
• Publication date
• Genre
• Copyright
• Description
• ISRC — the International Standard Recording Code identifying the recording
• Track number

The Title entered here is also used as the default file name prefix when saving regions to files.

Images

Lets you attach cover art and other pictures to the file, and remove pictures the file already contains.

Tempo and key settings

This tab holds the musical information about the recording and is grouped into three sections.

Tempo and Meter Settings

• Meter numerator and Meter denominator

  The time signature of the recording, for example 3 and 4 for 3/4 time. These values define the bars and beats used by the Bar:beat:tick time format (see Time Formats) and by snapping in multitrack sessions.

• Tempo (BPM)

  The tempo of the recording in beats per minute.

ACID Loop Settings

• Number of beats in loop

  The length of the loop in beats. Software that reads ACID loop information uses this to stretch the loop to the tempo of the host project.

• Loop key

  The musical key of the loop, or Unpitched for material without a defined pitch, such as a drum loop.

MIDI Sampler Settings

• MIDI Key

  The note the sample plays back at its recorded pitch, given as a note name and octave. This is the base note a sampler transposes from.

• Fine tuning

  A fine adjustment of the base note in cents.

These two settings are the same ones you can reach while adding a sampler loop — see Adding Loops for MIDI Samplers.

Broadcast Wave

The Broadcast Wave (BWF) extension adds production metadata to Wave files and is widely used in broadcast and post-production:

• Description
• Originator — who or what produced the file
• Originator reference — a unique reference to the recording
• Origination date and Origination time
• Time reference — the timecode position of the first sample, entered as a timecode value

Cart

The Cart chunk carries the metadata radio automation systems expect:

• Title, Artist
• Cut ID, Client ID
• Category, Classification
• Out Cue
• Start date, Start time, End date and End time — the window during which the item may be broadcast
• User defined text
• URL
• Timer settings — click the button to edit the cart timers