I was wondering where iTunes 6 pulls the data for the "Encoded with:" field on the summary tab for an MP3.

I encoded a new CD with EAC 0.95b3 + LAME 3.97b2 using the command line from the wiki to add the ID3 1.1 and 2.3 tag.

Without making any changes to the tag, iTunes shows "Encoded with: LAME3.97" in the Summary tab.

Looking at the ID3 tag in TheGodfather, the "Encoded by" field is blank and the
"Software/Hardware Encoder Settings" is "LAME 3.97 (Beta)"

Regardless of the changes I make to either field, iTunes 6 still shows "Encoded with: LAME3.97"


Now this isn't a huge deal... the only reason I was trying to change this was to differentiate my b1 from my b2 files... but it's kinda weird. Is this an iTunes issue or a TheGodfather issue. Is there some other tag field that I'm just not seeing?

By the by, the first thing I tried was removing and readding the file to the iTunes library after I changed the tag... same deal.

"LAME3.97" is from LAME's signature (at the end of the file IIRC) which is present even in non-id3-tagged encodes unless the LAME tag is explicitly disabled (ie. '-t'). This is a new feature in recent iTunes versions, previous versions would display the files as being encoded by "Unknown".

Interesting. In the past when I still used EAC to tag the file instead of the reccomended command line, iTunes would show "Encoded with: EAC (Secure)" which would show up in the "Encoded by" field in TheGodfather.

I'm still kinda trying to understand how the different LAME command lines work. Are you reccomending that I add "-t" to my command line to disable the LAME signature? Assuming that iTunes would then look to the "Encoded by" field of the tag (which is what I want it to do) is there a way to remove the signature from existing files?

If the 'encoded by' tag (TENC?) is present, that will be displayed instead, even if the file is lame-encoded. Disabling the LAME tags usually isn't a good idea, as it's tied to important VBR info.

Thanks for the infor on the LAME tags... I'll kee those around... but the basic point of my post is that I'm putting data in the "encoded by" and in the "Software/Hardware encoder settings" fields using TheGodfather and neither is overriding the display of "LAME3.97" when viewed in the summary tab in iTunes, i.e., that information is not being displayed instead.

I'm having the same problem. Besides the -t tag, is there a way to remove them, besides having to manually remove it from each mp3 file?

This sounds like an ITunes problem. Maybe you should send a bug report to Apple.

You're thinking about this in the wrong way. iTunes is getting the information from the LAME tags, not the id3 tags. The Godfather can edit id3 tags, but not LAME tags, as far as I know. The LAME tag is intended to store information about the file itself (it doesn't concern itself with abstract concepts such as authorship or title), and is more useful to the software you play it with than to you. Since you have very little ability to modify iTunes' behavior, the only way I can imagine to change what is displayed in that field is to change the encoder. (I might be able to help you with that, but I have no clue where in the source code that option is found.)

Edit: Having looked at the source code a little bit, it seems changing what appears in this field would be a bit more complex than someone with no programming knowledge whatsoever (namely myself) would be capable of.