So lately I have taken to the custom of burning MP3s to CD-Rs as data and playing them back on various hardware devices (car system, DVD player, and even Dreamcast, via "To-11").

A problem has presented itself regarding tags on files:

DVD player = NO tag support
Car player & To-11 = id3v1 tag support

Seeing this situation, I have been stripping tags from files before burning to CD-R. While this isn't that hard, it is time consuming and really just about defeats the purpose, as I could burn plenty of audio CDs in the amount of time it takes to perform this process.

I am wondering if APEV2 tags will break compatibility with any of these playback mechanisms (read: will APEV2 tags make the MP3 non-standard?)? What about if there are also id3v1 tags present on the file? What about if replaygain info is also present?

What combinations of tagging can I get away with while still (at least in theory, as that is a good place to start) not breaking compatibility with the standard MP3 file specifications?

What I am hoping to find out is that I can do APEv2 with id3v1 and replaygain info, and not break compatibility (as that is how my MP3 files are tagged now via foobar2000) so that I can simply burn the files in the form they sit on the hard drive without having to copy them over to a temp directory, strip tags, etc. then burn.

Thanks in advance.

normally it shouldnt break compatibility, as the ape2 tag is appended at the end of the file and normally standard decoders simply ignore anything after the music data itself, when it cant do anything with it. (exception: id3v1, of course)



the player will, if supported, read the id3v1 and ignore the ape2 tag appended to it.
replaygain info just is a tech field inside the ape2 tag, so it wont make a difference if its present or not....



summing up: yes, normally this should be exactly what you can safely believe in...

Well, on the contrary to Rasi's post, I've problems with APEv2 tags on my portable mp3/CD player.
As you might know, APEv2 tags begin with APETAGEXĐ, and ID3v1 tags begin with TAG.
Thus, my portable thinks when seeing an APEv2 tag that the tag simply contains "EXĐ", and display only this, completely ignoring the ID3v1 tag. One solution would be stripping APE tags, as you mentioned, but as my player supports ID3v2 I just tag all my files with this type of tag temporarily.

If there is some software which makes stripping APE tags and renaming files from tags easy, please don't hesitate to tell me, my only reason for using ID3v2 tags is the ease of tagging and renaming using some software.

BTW: my player is a Thomson PDP-2050. I tried to contact their support if it is possible to update the firmware to support or at least skip APE tags, but to no answer.

every rule has its exceptions....

I have been using foobar2000 and its masstagger function. It works flawlessly, although the process in general is a bit cumbersome.