dB "sees" different individual tag fields, but they're the same

[GeorgeButel]

Mp3Tag sees the tag fields the same wherever they're the same, but dB sees <different>. In the screenshot, you'll note that the identical 14 files are selected for each program. Mp3Tag correctly sees the artist, year, genre, album artist, and even artwork as being identical, whereas dB shows each of those to be <different>. (Examining the tags individually via dB shows them to be the same.) I'm curious as to how this could be.
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[Spoon]

You have id3v1 and id3v2 tags, I am guessing they are different.

[GeorgeButel]

I usually work with Mp3tag first, and it saves everything as what it describes as "ID3v2.3 (ID3v1 ID3v2.3)" ( Mp3tag v2.70). In other words, every single tag is saved by Mp3tag in the identical format. I need to use the regular tag function to do things like erase the "engineer" field. I just transcribed a cassette tape and imported it via Sound Forge Pro, and, somehow, it added me as the "engineer" to every tag, which I didn't realize until after I had gotten everything else all straightened out. (There must be a default setting in Sound Forge somewhere that does that.) And, sometimes, I have to change a file or two for the usual reasons (spelling error, etc.)
I just spent about 30 minutes with the same problem again. I wondered if maybe having Mp3tag open at the same time could be affecting the ability to save the "normal" tag, so I tried to avoid that. I opened an folder of mp3s that had all been created just then, in the identical format, using the identical program, with nothing else touching the files other than Sound Forge, then discovered that, sometimes it tells me that there are no tags, which reappear after closing/reopening, and it would even tell me that the artwork was different on each one. In other words, once Mp3 tag touched them, regardless of whatever Sound Forge had created, they should all be identical, unless there's some kind of glitch in Mp3tag.

[GeorgeButel]

First of all, can you fix the forum so that when the edit time has been exceeded, it doesn't send everything someone's just written into cyberlimbo?
I wanted to add that there is another possibility, that Apple's well-known virus, called iTunes, might have been changing tags while I was working on the files. What makes me suspicious is that one of the anomalies was that, when I selected all the files, dB saw all the dates as different. A number of those dates turned out to be, not the plain year that I had entered--1993--and which is what Mp3tag saw--but a month and date in addition to the year. They were showing something like Aug-23-1993. The spooky thing is that I was simultaneously checking that artist's discography at the same time, and the inserted month and date were wrong, but close. The actual date of the album's release was 08-13-1993, but I didn't feel like inserting anything besides the year. So something or other inserted an incorrect date into the "Year" field.

I notice tag differences when I synchronize with my backup HDD. It took me a long time to realize why FolderMatch had been seeing "different" files sometimes in years past. I found one example of a tag changing with a song that I'd extracted from a VHS tape many years ago. The television episode on which the song appeared was released in 1974, and I had manually entered the genre as gospel (it was a song from a Columbo episode which starred Johnny Cash.) Somehow, at an unknown time after I had created the file, the tag got "updated"--presumably via iTunes or WMP, even though the file was write-protected, which explains why I refer to those two programs as viruses--to showing a 1982 release, with a genre of "religious." That particular song did appear on an album in 1982, although the 1982 version was with other artists on a live album.

On the other hand, I don't have iTunes or iCloud starting up with Windows, and there's nothing in Task Manager that looks like it could be surreptitiously running all the time merely to keep all my tags up to date.

[mville]

Regarding the Date formats, configure the format you want in Configure dBpoweramp>Codecs>Advanced Options>mp3 ID Tagging.

Regarding iTunes and Windows Media Player, I would also configure these applications to NOT touch your audio library. I advise you never to use iTunes/WMP to automatically control your audio library or to edit your tags. DO NOT add your audio library to WMP or suffer the consequences. This has been discussed many times on these forums.

The only applications I use to edit my audio library tags are dBpoweramp, MP3Tag and foobar2000.

[garym]

The only applications I use to edit my audio library tags are dBpoweramp, MP3Tag and foobar2000.

Me too.

Also, a number of years ago I got rid of all my ID3v1 tags within mp3 files as they often caused the confusion you notice regarding editing a tag in one place and not seeing changes in another place. Other than *maybe* some car CD players that read mp3, I doubt there's any modern device that needs ID3v1 tags. So best approach is load up all your mp3 files in mp3tag and:

1. in mp3tag, TOOLS > OPTIONS > TAGS > mpeg

READ: tick ID3v1 ID3v2
WRITE: tick ID3v2, then I suggest you tick ID3v2.3 UTF16
REMOVE: tick both ID3v1 and APE

then hit the OK button.

2. Load up all mp3 files in your mp3tag active window. Hit SAVE (the disk icon upper left first tool bar icon). This makes sure that all ID3v2.3 tags are written.
3. Then select delete (the big red X, just next to the SAVE icon). This will do what you set the mpeg options to do above (i.e., remove all but the ID3v2.3 UTF16 tags).

4. then when you look in your tag type column you'll see something like: ID3v2.3 (ID3v2.3). (that is, now there is only ONE tag in each mp3 file rather than two tags).