Hi all,

Just a quick question regarding ID3 tags for LAME encoding when using EAC.

Currently I am using the LAME switches from the wiki:

-V 2 --vbr-new --add-id3v2 --pad-id3v2 --ta "%a" --tt "%t" --tg "%m" --tl "%g" --ty "%y" --tn "%n" %s %d

But I would like to change the track number so that it always uses two digits: 01, 02, 03 etc. and would like to stop adding "ENCODERSETTINGS = LAME v3.97 (beta)" if possible.

Does anyone know how both of these can be achieved?

Many thanks.

Lame will not write tags with two digit track numbers.
If you want track nummbers like 01, 02, 03 and so on you should let EAC do the tagging. Enable the option to write ID3 tags.

BTW Although the Wiki recommends to write tags using Lame, there is no reason why EAC should not do the tagging. Some of the problems with EAC tagging that the Wiki is pointing at, have been fixed in te latest version and others are in fact non-issues.

Cheers!

Yeah, but then EAC adds in its own comments. I guess I am always stuck editing the ID3 tags after ripping...

By default EAC will write something like Track # in the Comment field.
You can change that by selecting the radio button for User defined text in the Comment field and leave the text blank (or add your own personal message).
These options can be found in the Offset tab in the Compression Settings menu.

Cheers!

But sadly it doesn't give an option to not create a comment field (I'm pretty fussy with tagging!!)

Leave the text box blank.

A tag COMMENTS = "" will be created in this case.

If you use mp3tag (very good program) you will see all the tags and the different tag types for each file.

Very strange. This trick works perfectly in my situation. I don't know what's going on here.

I use Mp3tag too. It's a great tool indeed.

I thought I'd just double check what you were saying and using EAC to do the tagging (leaving the comment blank).

No comment field was created, which is good. The track numbers are all two-digit, which is also good.

However, I now have a new unwanted field "ENCODED BY = Exact Audio Copy (Secure mode)".

Is there any way to stop this being added?

Edit: Looking via UltraEdit I can see the file has been given the extra tags:-
TDEN (EncodingTime)
COMM (Comment)
TENC (EncodedBy)

although only EncodedBy is showing up in foobar and mp3tag.

Unfortunately you can't prevent EAC from writing the "Encoded by" field. It is written by default and there's no option to disable it.
But does it really matter? The files were ripped by EAC anyway ....

Doesn't really matter, no, but I restrict all of my mp3s so that they only have:-
ARTIST
ALBUM
GENRE
TITLE
TRACK
YEAR
except if it is a VA album in which case I also have an ALBUM ARTIST field (and of course the four RG values that I add using foobar2000).

I just try to make every mp3 tag identical if at all possible.


I think since EAC seems to be adding these extra (hidden?) fields I will probably go back to my original method of using LAME to do the tagging.