I used Tag&Rename 3.2 to enter tags for a large number of WavPack files. All the regular tags (Artist, Album, Title, Track #, Disc #, and so on) were read without any problems by fb2k. Even the perhaps less common "Composer" tag was read easily. On the other hand, fb2k consistently refused to read the "Album Artist" tag.

When I encountered this, I thought at first that the problem might have something to do with the format. As such, I converted a random file to MP3, set the "Album Artist" tag again in Tag&Rename, and once again tried to get it read in fb2k, but with no luck.

Next, I tried downloading the 0.9 Release Candidate. I read that one of the new features is "ID3v2 tag support", so it seemed likely that my problem would be fixed. Alas! no such luck.

In between all this, I went online to do some research. This led me to the discovery that "Album Artist" isn't actually a tag specified in the ID3v2 specification; rather, it comes under "User-defined content" or something to that effect (I can't remember the exact wording ). Still, since a lot of fb2k scripts mention "Album Artist", and it's also mentioned in the Title format strings reference page, I assume that the tag is normally read by fb2k.

This leads me to the conclusion that perhaps Tag&Rename didn't tag my files correctly. However, I cannot find any application that will let me check this. I tried downloading Mp3tag; it doesn't support "Album Artist".

So, after that rather long explanation of my problem, I would appreciate any pointers to steer me in the right direction if my diagnosis is incorrect, or, if that is not the case, any links to software that recognizes the "Album Artist" tag.

What T&R labels as "Album Artist" is actually the ID3v2 TPE2 frame that foobar (AND Mp3tag) show as BAND tag.
For Wavpack files, T&R writes an ENSEMBLE tag

You should see this in foobar if you check the file properties (or in Mp3tag just press Alt+T)

Ah! Thank you so much!

Hmm... is there a seperate "Album Artist" field that fb2k reads, in that case? And would you happen to know any way to set that from Tag&Rename?

I think I asked the wrong question. Perhaps a better question would be: how can I set the "Album Artist" field read by foobar2000? I'd like to do it in Tag&Rename if possible, but I'm not averse to using something else.

(sorry for the double post)

Remember that foobar does not rely on certain tag fields, it more or less depends on the title formatting config that you use. You could change your config to use the tags that T&R sets.

But of course the most common way in the foobar world is to use an "ALBUM ARTIST" tag field.
T&R does not support this, but you can use foobar itself or Mp3tag to add a new field called ALBUM ARTIST with the value Various Artists

I do this with Mp3tag, and it works like a charm!

I did that as a stopgap measure (made for an interesting foray into the world of title formatting!). However, as I'm unnecessarily obsessive about tagging all my music properly, I'd like the file itself to have the correct tags.

I will do that. Thanks once again.

I must say, this was a sad discovery for me. I thought I'd finally found a multi-format, "by the book" tagging application.

EDIT:
Just used fb2k to fix the problem. I <3 that Masstagger. And as it turns out, my alterations to soap.fcs are unneeded with a proper ALBUM ARTIST.