Author Topic: Which MP3 tagger do you use? (Read 88,561 times)

mwfuss · « **Reply #25 on:** November 06, 2007, 06:36 PM »

I use both mp3tag and Tag&Rename.

CWuestefeld · « **Reply #26 on:** November 06, 2007, 06:48 PM »

OK, with MP3tag being so popular... Can you tell me if it understands the AlbumArtist tag? A big part of the reason I use different tools is that support for this tag is still uncommon.

Some of my favorite things to listen to in the car are compilations like "Like, Omigod! The '80s Pop Culture Box" (http://www.rhino.com/store/ProductDetail.lasso?Number=78239) and "Have A Nice Decade: The '70s Pop Culture Box" (http://www.rhino.com/store/ProductDetail.lasso?Number=72919). If you can't assign an AlbumArtist of "Various" to these, then the content of the disc gets fragmented by the library software so you can't listen to it all as one unit (without creating playlists).

(BTW, that "Have A Nice Decade" set is really cool. Between the tracks it's got several news clips, reporting on 70s events like Watergate, Patty Hearst, "Jesus Freaks", etc. It really gives some cool context to the music.)

Lashiec · « **Reply #27 on:** November 06, 2007, 06:51 PM »

Yes, Mp3tag understands any tag you create and embed in the file. You have to go to the "Extended tags" panel by clicking in any file(s) you wish to edit, and there you can define the tags. As you can define a renaming mechanism as well, it's easy to set up a renaming scheme that chooses either "Album Artist" or "Artist" (a conditional sentence).

Dude Spell · « **Reply #28 on:** November 19, 2007, 06:32 PM »

Great piece of software.

ID3 Sync

Quote

Let us assume that each file contains a least some correct information, for example: you might have a mp3 which has the correct artist in the filename, the correct title is in the id3v2 tag whilst the id3v1 tag contains the name of the album. ID3-Sync presents you with a simple and fast interface to select the correct information from these different sources. It then updates the id3v1 and id3v2 tags and renames your file according to a pattern you can specify.

rjdegraff · « **Reply #29 on:** November 20, 2007, 01:26 AM »

Tag & Rename by Softpointer

billryan_nz · « **Reply #30 on:** November 20, 2007, 07:15 AM »

Tag 'n Rename - by a long shot (and I've tried a few over the years, including several on the original list).

I have a huge collection with 70% of it classical and jazz. To boot, I'm a pedant (I'd prefer 'social historian' but my family thinks otherwise!) regarding details. Tag 'n Rename does what it does such that the information shows as I wish in my preferred players, J River Media Centre and (on rare occasions) WMP - gave up on WinAmp 2-3 years ago. It can also handle flac and ogg - not that I use them much...

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #31 on:** November 20, 2007, 09:23 AM »

Poll updated again! (note you can remove votes and also vote for as many as you want)

If you want to change your vote simply remove your vote and then you can choose as many as you like again.

Shame the voting system can't be weighted so that you can order your votes in order of importance to you and items get a fractional vote depending on where they are in the list.

app103 · « **Reply #32 on:** November 20, 2007, 12:54 PM »

I wonder how many are aware that you can quick edit a tag in Explorer for an .mp3 file by right clicking and going to properties, and then on the 'Summary' tab, clicking 'Advanced', and then clicking what you want to add or change, then hitting 'Apply' when done.

Dr-Leech · « **Reply #33 on:** November 20, 2007, 01:45 PM »

For masstagging MP3Tag, for album tagging Musicbrainz.

TheQwerty · « **Reply #34 on:** November 20, 2007, 02:05 PM »

MP3Tag, foobar2000, and some custom scripting.

foobar2000's gotten to the point where I could probably ditch MP3Tag, but since all it does is tagging I still prefer MP3Tag's interface for doing a lot of bulk editing.

Plus, it's a lot easier to deal with the different versions of ID3 tags within MP3Tag.

CleverCat · « **Reply #35 on:** November 21, 2007, 07:26 AM »

What are the advantages of tagging?

app103 · « **Reply #36 on:** November 21, 2007, 02:09 PM »

Quote from: CleverCat on November 21, 2007, 07:26 AM

What are the advantages of tagging?

Some things require tags in order to work properly, such as the Last.fm service. And some MP3 CD players (like mine) rely on tags to let you know what you are listening to, searching for songs, and allowing you to set up playlists.

Also, there is more than just artist/album/track/title that can go in a tag, such as genre, lyrics, year, composer, url of artist's homepage (or where you downloaded it from), original artist (if it is a cover tune), copyright holder (if it is different than the artist), comments (or a tiny bit of related trivia, or a list of all the members of a band).

You could never include all that info in the file name...it would be much too long.

People that are true music freaks will research all this stuff and add the info to every track they have. Then they will never wonder about it later because it's all in the tags in case they can't remember...or if they have software that can utilize the tags they have added. It is particularly useful with software that allows you to search your collection and gives results based on tag info.

So let's say for example you want to make a play list of all songs by and related to John Lennon and you do a search of your collection (provided you have an application or player that supports all tags and your files are fully tagged with all data).

You would get as your results...

all songs by him specifically
all Beatles songs if you put his name as a band member in the comments
all songs that are covers of his songs by other artists
all songs that mention his name in the lyrics
all songs he wrote the lyrics for but never performed himself
all songs he composed the music for but maybe didn't perform
all Julian Lennon songs if you added that he was the son of John Lennon in the comments tag
all Yoko Ono songs if you added that she was his wife in the comments tag
etc, etc, etc.

wuwei23 · « **Reply #37 on:** November 22, 2007, 10:45 AM »

MP3Tag is hands down the best tagger I've used; it even runs (almost) perfectly on Ubuntu under WINE.

Armando · « **Reply #38 on:** December 24, 2007, 05:26 PM »

Interesting coincidence, there seem to be 2 different software (with a different version number) of mp3tag :

http://www.mp3tag.de/en/
http://www.maniactools.com/soft/mp3tag/

So, which one is the "right" one ?

vegas · « **Reply #39 on:** December 24, 2007, 05:54 PM »

http://www.mp3tag.de/en/ ...Hands Down.

Lashiec · « **Reply #40 on:** December 24, 2007, 06:28 PM »

Notice that the freeware one is "Mp3tag" and the shareware "mp3tag". This is what happens when you choose a popular name

Curt · « **Reply #41 on:** January 28, 2009, 02:31 PM »

I have been trying MP3tag for a couple of months, and was overall pleased with it. The reason I nevertheless have ditched it is because it was ruining MP3Ext's ability to read the bit rates. I cannot imagine what MP3tag is doing to the files, when tagging them, that are changing the signal the file later is sending to the MP3Ext's bit-rate reader, but it is doing something.

I am now trying Tag&Rename (3.5 RC 1), MP3 Collector, and some others, instead.

---

This thread is a little old, and maybe needs to be updated,
so I guess it is 'appropriate' to repeat masu's initial question:

Which MP3 tagger do you use?

TheQwerty · « **Reply #42 on:** January 28, 2009, 05:55 PM »

Quote from: Curt on January 28, 2009, 02:31 PM

I cannot imagine what MP3tag is doing to the files, when tagging them, that are changing the signal the file later is sending to the MP3Ext's bit-rate reader, but it is doing something.

I'd be willing to bet that you have MP3Tag set to write ID3v2.4 (which I believe is the default) and MP3Ext only handles or prefers ID3v2.3 or earlier. But it's a bit of a wild guess since I've never used MP3Ext and don't know much about it.

You could change that in MP3Tag and test it; the option is found at Tool -> Options -> Tags -> Mpeg.

I do all my tagging within Foobar2000 and MP3Tag and they've both worked extremely well for me for many years.

Dirhael · « **Reply #43 on:** January 28, 2009, 07:32 PM »

Quote from: TheQwerty on January 28, 2009, 05:55 PM

Quote from: Curt on January 28, 2009, 02:31 PM
I cannot imagine what MP3tag is doing to the files, when tagging them, that are changing the signal the file later is sending to the MP3Ext's bit-rate reader, but it is doing something.
I'd be willing to bet that you have MP3Tag set to write ID3v2.4 (which I believe is the default) and MP3Ext only handles or prefers ID3v2.3 or earlier. But it's a bit of a wild guess since I've never used MP3Ext and don't know much about it.

You could change that in MP3Tag and test it; the option is found at Tool -> Options -> Tags -> Mpeg.

I do all my tagging within Foobar2000 and MP3Tag and they've both worked extremely well for me for many years.

Yeah, I've used mp3tag for quite some time now and I've never had problems with the files after tagging them (well, except the id3v2.3 vs 2.4 issue with some players but that's hardly a fault of mp3tag).

If you really do believe that whatever program you're using to tag files are altering the audio data itself, use foobar2000 with the offical Binary Comparator component to check the files (just create a copy of the files before tagging, then compare them with tagged copies).

Curt · « **Reply #44 on:** January 28, 2009, 11:10 PM »

Quote from: TheQwerty on January 28, 2009, 05:55 PM

Quote from: Curt on January 28, 2009, 02:31 PM
I cannot imagine what MP3tag is doing to the files, when tagging them, that are changing the signal the file later is sending to the MP3Ext's bit-rate reader, but it is doing something.
I'd be willing to bet that you have MP3Tag set to write ID3v2.4 (which I believe is the default) and MP3Ext only handles or prefers ID3v2.3 or earlier.

- your bet might not be taken, and MP3Ext has not been updated for five years, so your explanation *should* seem likely. However, I have now transcoded all the files in question, using MediaCoder, and once they have been transcoded (to the very same bit rate as they already were) they are being displayed correctly, by MP3Ext. Meaning, the error could not have been caused by the tags, but must have been caused by the file's bit-rate coding, or whatever. Apparently altered by MP3tag.

Or what? Does MediaCoder maybe also alter the tags, without telling?

Writer · « **Reply #45 on:** January 29, 2009, 04:04 AM »

Have you tried TagScanner? Although the macro ability in MP3tag is better, TagScanner stands out for its neat UI.

baeksam · « **Reply #46 on:** January 29, 2009, 06:14 AM »

Tag & Rename

Cosiness · « **Reply #47 on:** November 19, 2009, 12:49 PM »

I use MP3 Tag Pro, it allows not only to extract the correct id3 tags from a music file, but if it is missing it can download this information from the Internet. It can also find and download the sonds' lyrics and album covers.

[edited to remove link - mouser]

tomos · « **Reply #48 on:** November 19, 2009, 01:10 PM »

Quote from: Cosiness on November 19, 2009, 12:49 PM

I use ________, it allows not only to extract the correct id3 tags from a music file, but if it is missing it can download this information from the Internet. It can also find and download the sonds' lyrics and album covers.

dubious link there in original post ? (affiliate link I believe)

[edit] I was having a look at the app & clicked on the BUY link to see the price & noticed the word 'affiliate' in the url [/edit]

Innuendo · « **Reply #49 on:** November 19, 2009, 03:14 PM »

I actually tried MP3 Tag Pro a month or two ago & I didn't think it was all that impressive from what I recall. There are much better solutions available.