Okay, so I just switched to foobar2000 and things are going well. But I'm really curious whether I should use ID3v2 tags (v1 is out for me) or APEv2. I can't seem to find any good resources that compare the two, here or on the Web. I know ID3v2 rewrites the entire file, which sucks. But I'd like to find some resources that compare the two.

I use both. I'd like to use APEv2 only, but the only player that supports it that I know of is foobar. iTunes, WMP etc. don't...that's why I need id3v2 tags...however, mp3gain stores all it's tags as APEv2...therefore, I use both

If APEv2 gains better software support, I'll just strip out id3v2 tags...

I really need to settle on a tag format. I might have done APEv2 and ID3v1 but I have a lot of Japanese music and I prefer my tags in the original Japanese. But ID3v2 as I understand it seems to have some very annoying eccentricities, such as having to rewrite the entire file each time a tag is updated because the tags are written at the beginning of the file. (Is that correct? What were they thinking?) Plus I've read here on these forums that ID3v2 is terribly complicated, though I'm not sure how true that is.

APEv2 tags, as you say, aren't very well supported outside of foobar2000. (One of my secondary players, XMPlay, just released an update that recognizes APEv2 tags, though.) Is support for APEv2 expanding in any appreciable way? I can't even find the APEv2 specs anywhere online, including the APE website. I'm confused and frustrated. I need to know how to use APEv2's tags correctly (e.g., Date vs Year, plus the syntax).

APEv2 is an extension of the Monkey's Audio tagging format, made by Frank Klemm for use with musepack.
You can find the specs on his musepack sv8 page, mirrored here:

http://hydrogenaudio.org/musepack/klemm/ww...sv8/apetag.html

that's what padding is for...so the file hasn't been rewriten every time you change something. Also, I've never encountered any problems with ID3v2...

But why are you asking? If your are fine with APEv2 and it's lacking software support, use it, otherwise use ID3v2!

Thanks for the pointer!

I think I'm leaning in that direction. I like the simplicity of the format, but I do miss the ENCODER and ENCODEDBY fields, I admit. Thing is, are there any APEv2 tag editors outside of Foobar that support Unicode characters? Mp3tag doesn't, TagScanner doesn't, Tag&Rename doesn't even load the files when they hold only hold APEv2 tags (which might be a settings issue?).

Thanks.

Well feel free to add them to your files then. APE tags are by no means restricted to some "standard" tags like artist and album. You can use whatever tag you like.

edit: added the word "use"

Thanks for the reply, Echo. This was actually causing me a bit of confusion because I'm editing my tags with fb2K and checking them with Tag, the command-line utility. This is what I saw for a recent file:


(Note that I haven't finish editing the this albums's tags, and the question marks indicate Japanese characters that, of course, won't show up in DOS.) I noticed how the last four entries were marked with equals signs instead of colons, and I began to wonder if this meant that these were disallowed tags. But since they are mentioned at the official (?) list of APE Tag Item Keys, I'm not sure what's going on. Does whether a colon or an equals sign is used mean anything? Thanks much. (The official ID3v2 page seems to be clearer than this page is ...)

I use ID3v2 for my mp3 files because I need the tags to be recognised by my ipod/ephpod. For all other formats - lossless, mpc - I use APEv2 tags. They are faster to write due to not having to rewrite the file all the time, and that's all the reason I need. If my portable could read APE tags, I'd stop using ID3 permanently.

edit: my mistake, not ogg

What kind of software writes APEv2 tags to Ogg files ?

1) ID3v2 is written at the beginning of the file because this is usefull in streaming situations.
2) Yes, ID3v2 is terribly complicated but this is something that should bother only the developers, not the end users

Tag just simply displays some tags that are generally considered to be "standard" like artist and title in front of the others and separates tag name and content with a colon. The rest "non standard" tags are displayed after them and name and content are separated with an equal sign. "standard" and "non standard" tags have no difference at all except from the fact that some programs consider them standard. There are no disallowed tags at all. You can easily create a tag like MY_CUSTOM_TAG="abcde" if you like. In the same manner and regarding a previous question of yours you can use DATE or YEAR or whatever you like.

Year or Date? There must be one that's standardized, though, for loading in GUI-bound taggers. Date would make the most sense, but I think it's Year ...

ID3v2 is complicated, but not needlessly so as some people here would have you believe. The ability to have custom frames, unicode, variable frame lengths, custom flags, streaming support etc. makes for a complex, but very flexible, tagging system. ID3v1, while simple to code for, is braindead by comparison.

As a USER, not a developer, all you should have to worry about when using ID3v2 is that there is a pause the first time to write the tag, while the tagger writes in the padding. After that, there should be NO DOWNSIDES WHATSOEVER with using ID3v2 tags on modern properly-written MP3 decoding software (which is most or all of it).

So... in what cases is the entire file rewritten? Or is it? And if so, is this a source of concern; that an error might be introduced into the audio data during this rewriting?

APEv2 tag supports all those things, and it's almost trivial to implement.


Entire file is rewritten in cases where:

- ID3v2 tag is written for the first time
- The tagging software doesn't add or doesn't support padding
- The added data is larger than the padding

As for introducing errors, well, generally no. However, on the grounds of my programming experience with ID3v2 tags, I wouldn't be surprised if at least some ID3v2 implementations were rather buggy. And most taggers implement only a subset of ID3v2 functionality; you can just hope that tagger B supports the features that tagger A included to the tag.

The other thing is that while ID3v2 supports frames for more data then you could possibly want to include in your music (Individual musicians, involved persons, Orchestra, Conductor, Original lyrics writer), there are very few player and tagger programs that support any but the most essential tag data, like Artist, Album, Track, etc. ID3-TagIt supports most, if not all of ID3v2's tags, and I've never had a problem writing new tags with it (when it writes a new tag, it pads with 2KB at the front for future changes). But if you can't find a player that supports those frames, there's not much point. (Not even Winamp recogizes the "Disc" tag, which I find indispensable. I think foobar does though.)

Just use DATE in fb2k. foobar2000's tag writing is clever enough to map this to the appropriate fields ('Year' in ID3v1 and APEv2).

foobar2000's standard field names are based on the Vorbis Comment standard.

Thanks, everyone. Should I use track numbers like "6/13" in Ogg Vorbis comments, or should I use two separate fields (adding, for example, TOTALTRACKS or something)? Or does it matter? I'm trying to remain as close to the standards as possible here ...

Well i hope you aren't using that as your argument for why APE is better then. First of all, ID3v2 doesn't store frames unless they have something in them, so they're only there if you want to use them. Second of all, APE frames are almost universally not read at all, anywhere

I just don't understand why someone would choose MP3 over MPC (well, for compatibility, right??) and then choose an incompatible tagging system. MP3 + ID3v2 is THE defacto standard for audio... if you're listening on a PC with Foobar, wicked... use those APE tags... but with MPC or FLAC or something!!

Type

Artist="The Artist"
Title="The Title"
Album="Blank"

in fb2k using APEv2 only
to the new MP3 without any tags (especially without RG tags), all other fields leave blank

open resulting mp3 in winamp or any tagger except fb2k

Almost any program will think the file contains ID3v1. If you edit this "tag", ape will got corrupted. WHY the creators of APE used a part of ID3v1 signature "TAG" in their own signature???

Also this situation may appear if one of the APE fields contains "TAG" (VOLTAGE,STAGE,VINTAGE) in the appropriate position.

<so, APE must not (correct me, if there is another way) be used without ID3v1, to prevent this situation>

I like ID3v2, but most programs does not support even the essential features, like unicode. I dont speaking about unique and also intresting features like unsynchronisation... So, the two widely supported features of ID3v2 over ID3v1 are only the larger number of letters possible and more fields.

Maybe APE is good and easy, but its usability with MP3 format is doubtful...

On the "stardard inputs" properties in fb2k, you should
choose id3v1 + id3v2, for compatibility with everything else. Then fb2k will use id3 tags with mp3.
Fb2k will automatically use ApeV2 tags with MPC, as Ape tags are
the standard for them, and any MPC decoder should use them, correct? Also isn't there some conflict with
using ape and id3v2 tags?

??
the marker for id3 frames is ID3, not TAG..
I don't see a reason why a player would overwrite the APE tag at all. and I've never seen it happen. Well, the only case when I change ID3 tags out of foobar is when I use RioMusicManager, I never use winamp. and I didnt disable foobar's ID3v1 writing (why would you ??)
winamp might be doing wicked things..


I really dont think so. no player should confuse an APE tag with an ID3 frame, unless it's really broken.
But honestly, I dont disable the ID3v1 tags, they're a nice fallback for the players not supporting APEv2.

personnally, I use APEv2, and the id3v1 are enough when I play files on my Rio Karma DAP.



well it depends on how you use it, I guess. I find it quite useful on my 50 gig MP3 collection.

No. It's just that storing information in 2 redundant sets of tags is asking for trouble.
(one player might modify the id3v2, then another one might use the APEv2 tags rather than id3v2, even if it sees both - there's no way to know which set of tags is the more up-to-date)
well, players could add a "comment date" tag when they modify the APE tags.
But since there's no id3 tag for that, and anyway you could never be sure other players used such tags, foobar could only check the file's modification date to try to guess if the id3 tags have been updated.. and that wouldnt be very reliable.

J44xm - If I'm correct in what I think your avatar is , do you think it's appropriate?

ToS 11 does not cover avatars, but it's the closest:
"11. All member sigs must be kept brief -- 3 to 4 lines at most. They must also be non-obtrusive, and non-offensive."

I apologise if I'm wrong, but it looks very dodgy to me. I can describe it if required (someone is gonna ask me to describe it I know... just out of badness!).

Mods?

Can someone else also have a look to see if they also think it's dodgy.

…And what do you think that avatar is?

Until I get told what J44xm says it is or anyone else can also 'see' the dodgyness of it, I'll not reveal my perception of it. Suffice to say it looks quite painful for the person standing under the flesh-coloured object above them... and indeed the 'tribal' markings also might have smarted a little when applied to the same flesh-coloured area

Edit: I've chatted with J44xm and it is indeed an innocuous avatar. My bad for having such a warped brain to see the, I have to say, quite obscene image.

The marker of ID3v1 is "TAG"
The marker of ID3v2 is "ID3"
The marker of APE is "APETAGEX"

any program that supports ID3v1 and tries to read ID3 _BEFORE_ APE, or just not support APE, will erroneously detect part of specific APE tag as ID3v1. And if it try to modify ID3v1, APE will get corrupted.

Two different examples of such cases:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=32197

Well, I appreciate your bringing your concerns to me. In fact, that is a picture of my own face with Photoshop's polar coordinates filter applied. That's all it is. (Those are my eyes at the side, and my mouth, with mustache and goatee, in the middle.) By your comments, though, you're clearly seeing something pretty ... interesting!


Personally, I use APEv2 with ID3v1 disabled because a good deal of my music is Japanese and is titled with Japanese characters, which would, I believe, result in strings of questions marks in ID3v1.

Probably. The data type of the ID3v1 fields isn't defined so they could contain, for example, UTF-8 or UTF-16 encoded data.

As there is nothing even remotely resembling a standard for ID3v1, most implementations just use extended ASCII with the user's default codepage. This becomes fun when exchanging ID3v1 tagged files from areas using different codepages...

Some implementations replace every character above 7-bit US-ASCII with a question mark, others just shove the text in with arbitrary encoding.

The marker for ID3v1 tags at the end of the file is TAG, the marker for ID3v2 tags at the beginning of the file is ID3.

Do either ID3v2 or APEv2 tags support the "6/9" track labelling scheme, or is it better to separate these (e.g., TRACK(NUMBER) = 6; TOTALTRACKS = 9)? Thanks.

[Note: I've been unable to access this site for the past day without using a proxy server. I'm wondering if the recent avatar issue has caused the mods to, I don't know, block my IP or something. This has never happened before and it only happens on this site, in Firefox and IE. Any information on this is welcomed. It's quite grating.]

I know ID3v2 supports it (6/9), don't know about APE tags.

Regarding your connection issue, it seems you're not alone...
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=32226

Track field in ID3v2 is a text field, so you can write even "two", "first",...
Same for APE.

Thanks, Cosmo and Volmax. I appreciate your help. (And my connection is back to normal, too!)

I just had an idea. External metadata in XML files.
You've got a file named '01 - SongTitle.xxx', then you'll have a file called
'01 - SongTitle.xml'.
Your player can then save its data in that file and not have to risk
fudging up your files with current or future music players.
If your player doesn't support it, then be stuck with the ancient
tagging standard. Your player can support as little or as much as
much it wants of the metadata standard.
It could be a problem with renaming files, but any good mp3 renamer like
musicbrainz will rename the xml files too.

An added benefit is the sha1 hash of your your illegally gotten music
will stay the same even though it has new tags.

That's a nice side-effect of the database too.

Re: External metadata in XML files (external database)

Not a bad concept.

.m3u playlists with extended info descriptions (#EXTINF:) sort-of achieve that already (displaying info different from (or non-existent in) the metatags), though that's not to say it couldn't be improved upon.

The metadata could even hold replaygain, or anything!
Unicode maybe even! It would look like binary
<somedata>
^%$^????^?%??^?&?^?%?&$?&^%$?
</somedata>

Too bad my programming knowledge doesn't extend beyond QBasic, lol.

It might not even be too hard to implement, just use a good opensource
xml parser. From the sound of it, it would be magnitudes less
difficult than id3v2.
Maybe it could even be stored in the new WinFS.

Ok. So I'll use APE V2. The problem is configuring eac. I followed the advice here: http://www.saunalahti.fi/~cse/EAC/index.html

But i keep getting wave files, despite change the extension in eac to ape...

Any thoughts?

Edit: Your question has nothing to do with the topic. Please do not cross-post, but use your original post to reply.

Is it possible to add id3v2 padding with foobar, as tagging in that is really slow, but i notice some taggers add padding and tagging is really fast, after the first time.

Also when i convert a flac to mp3 what commandline setting should i use to add padding?

Same here. Updating ID3v2 tags in ID3-TagIt is a breeze but it's always a production with fb2K.

AFAIK there's a limitation in foobar when updating ID3v2 tags that makes it necessary to rewrite the entire file every time. Search and you shall find it for it has been reported some times before...

To me this is a major pain, because I have a large collection and APEv2 in mp3 files is basically unsupported outside foobar... So I'm stuck with ID3v2.

Use of ID3v2 is generally discouraged by the fb2k dev team, and thus the slow tagging speed is meant to discourage its use. As such, this complaint will likely fall on deaf ears, although I know not what 0.9 will bring.

Thank you for the information, Canar. This is pretty impertinent of the developers. They know full well that some of us need ID3v2 for various reasons. Assuming your explanation is correct, I'm pretty put off by that attitude.

This is unwise IMO, because apparently they are trying to force something that users do not want/need (does sony ring a bell here? ). Users want/need ID3v2 with fast retagging for compatibility purposes. Want it or not ID3v2 is supported everywhere whereas APEv2 is supported basically nowhere... Oh, and adding the option to tag with ID3v1 and APEv2 is not enough because everybody knows that ID3v1 is very limited...

Much better and wise would be to properly support ID3v2 AND APEv2 and let the users decide which one to use.

On a personal note I would gladly change to APEv2 if it were widely supported, but unfortunately it is not... I have nothing against it...

just my 2c.

Same here, man. I've had good experiences with APEv2 but ID3v2 fits my needs at the moment and foreseeable future.

I'll give you a practical example: I have a mp3 collection and a portable mp3 player. If I tag the mp3 files with APEv2 I cannot access the tags in my portable player, but if I tag them with ID3v2 I can... So I do not have much choice, do I? plain and simple...

That's the kind of dilemma that users have to face... What tag do you think they would choose? And if foobar is too slow to retag the mp3 files they would just move to another solution...


edit: added a little more clarification

Open sourcing foobar2k would solve that.