I've been using Foobar2000 forever it seems, and i've used it to basically re-write the tags on every file i have in my music library (due to adding RG data or other reasons).

Now that i got a 2nd gen ipod nano i'm starting to think about using iTunes 7 as my main music program, simply because i don't like having to use two different programs for doing the same thing. Also my GF uses my computer often to play music and she's much more comfortable with using iTunes 7 (since she has a ipod herself) than using Foobar2000 (she just doesnt understand it well, hehe, or just doesnt want to i guess).

After adding my music library to iTunes 7.0.2 basically 90% of my music files is shown with these artifacts:



Now this is extremely annoying for me. I've read some about it on earlier threads saying that this is because Foobar2000 uses ID3V2.4 which iTunes 7 apparently does not support correctly. Seeing as Apple will probably never fix this i want it fixed in another way.

Is there any way to re-write the ID3 tag version on ALL my music files, but keeping all the tag details ofcourse, to ID3V2.3 so that these artifacts will NOT show up in iTunes 7.0?

Please help me out here, i don't want to manually edit every file in iTunes 7 myself (which doesn't write the info the files, but rather to it's database, so it's basically just "fixed" until you add the same files to another iTunes library anyway).

I don't know if this will solve your problem, but if you right click on a track or selection of tracks, you have the option to "Convert ID3 tags..." which will then give you the option of what version to convert to. The same option appears under the Advanced menu when tracks are selected. You can do the whole library at once if you want.

Ok, thanks. Do you know if this actually re-writes the new tags to the files themselfs, or only to the iTunes database? Changing tags in iTunes only writes the changes to the database it seems, not to the files themselfs.

Also do you know if i will loose any tag info added by foobar2000 by converting this way? (ReplayGain data for example).

Converting the ID3 tags within iTunes 7 did not help at all

Anyone got a working solution to fix this without destroying my tags?

In a modern version of foobar2000 (like .0.9.4.2), set "ID3v2 Writer Compatibility Mode" (under Preferences... Advanced) -- that odd little named selection makes foobar2000 use de facto standard ID3v2.3 instead of the less compatible ID3v2.4 on MP3 files.

After that's set, rewriting the file tags in foobar2000 should convert them to ID3v2.3.

If for whatever reason mass conversion doesn't work in f2k, you can easily use mp3tag to do the same thing. You have many options. Just avoid ID3v2.4 and you'll be fine with iTunes, Media Player, etc.

grommet beat me to it

before I add my mp3 files into iTunes I load them into foobar and rewrite the tags to ID3v2. Just make sure in your preferences>input>standard inputs> that you have the correct mp3 tag option selected. i should mention i'm still using foobar2000 v0.8.3

Thank you very much! Ticked that option (and Force preferred tag writing scheme on all files regardless of existing tags) and ID3v2 + ID3v1, re-writing all the tags now (seems to take a while) and really hoping it fixes this

Those squares are annoying as ....!

EDIT: And it worked perfectly. Thanks!