For mp3s, I've always preferred APE tags to ID3v2, so I'm glad to see the addition of the advanced options to foobar 0.92, with the force tag type option. Trouble now is, if a file contains both APE and ID3v2 tags, it reads the ID3v2 tag instead of the APE tag. Can't the tag read order be set to match the force tag option?

What exactly is the problem? Both Apev2 and ID3v2 have identical tags so it doesn't matter which one fb2k reads (I think it reads both).

If I edit the APE tag in a seperate program, it now contains different info to the ID3v2 tag. But foobar will read the now out-dated info from ID3v2 instead of the new APE info. I mean to delete the ID3v2 tag, but I keep forgetting to do it, so I've set foobar to do the job.

0.82 had an option to choose the tag order, so I'm only after a return to the previous system.

There never was an option for tag reading order.

Even when you don't use separate programs, this has turned into a problem. I did alot of manual tagging with previous versions of foobar2000. All of this info was stored in APEv2 tags, as that was the recommended format around here, back then. At the time, I left all the ID3v2 alone, as I felt that was the best and easiest approach. Now foobar2000 preferes ID3v2 tags, and hence displays the contents of the old tags left in my files.

Any suggestions for an easy way to copy contents of APEv2 into ID3v2? I don't feel like doing alot of tagging over again.

Last I checked, mp3tag could copy tags from one type to another, such as APEv2 to ID3vX

You should be able to select all the files you want to modify, right click on the bulk selection, choose "Tagging" then "MP3 Tag Types" from the popup menu. First uncheck the box for ID3v2 and check the box for APEv2, then click [Update Files]. This should copy any ID3v2 tags to APEv2 tags for any files that dont have an APEv2 tag, then remove the ID3v2 tag from all the files. Select MP3 Tag types again, check the box for ID3v2 adn click [Update Files]. This should copy all your APEv2 tags to ID3v2 tags and all your files should now have both tags with identical information.

I do not use APEv2 tags so if I am overlooking something and someone has a better suggestion please add it.

Sorry foosian, could have sworn there was. Was it a plugin, maybe?

Either way, now we have a choice of which tag to write, it would be nice to have a choice of which tag to read.

Only option there ever was controlled MP3 tag writing and not reading:
Click to view attachment
However, despite of clear label, multiple forum mebers strongly believed it to somehow impact tag reading, and even formats other than MP3. A similar phenomenon has been already sighted with the new option.

Found out yesterday that SamDisk Sansa MP3 player does not like Chinese coded in GBK (ID3v1 and APE tags). After playing with different settings in mp3tag, I found that it only accepts ID3v2.3 UTF-16 encoding.
I am sort of thinking out loud. I am naive about all these tag types. I guess that ID3v1 does not support unicode encoding and the MP3 player most certainly does not read APE tags even if I converted files codepage to unicode encoding. So the only option to let the MP3 player showing Chinese is to add ID3v2.3 UTF-16 tag, in addition to the other two tags I have already had since foobar2k 0.83.

…No.


Correct.


That would be likely.

And that has nothing to do with the APE tag itself, unless you had some misread ANSI characters. In either case, the APE tag would be UTF-8.


Pity you can't do that. Maybe bug your player manufacturer for a firmware update? (Yeah, fat chance of that happening, I suppose.)

Is it supported by Rockbox?