Stuck With 30,000 Bad Tags And Elusive Support

[meme]

I have ripped almost 2000 CD's using dbpoweramp. Though I was troubled with several tagging compatibility issues I noticed using other software I continued in good faith due to the moderator's insistence that dbpoweramp's tag format was correct. Unfortunately both I and several other users on this forum have asked candidly for the name of a single piece of third party software that was fully compatible with these tags, but none could be provided for us, and through all our searching we could find none ourselves.

TO BE CLEAR, THE TAGS WRITTEN BY DBPOWERAMP ARE NOT FULLY SUPPORTED BY ANY OTHER PROGRAM IN EXISTENCE. Whether these tags are technically correct or not is a moot issue. There are plenty of other software packages out there that are well regarded and fully compatible with each other. The claim (which was actually made!) that they are all bugged in the exact same way is meaningless even if it is true (which it isn't).

If the conclusions I have drawn from all this are wrong then hopefully this post will have gotten someone's attention so that they can correct me. I'll happily apologize if someone can give me the name of a program that can fully use these tags the way they are intended so that I may enjoy this library I've created with dbpoweramp.

If as I suspect there are no such programs, perhaps the gurus here might assist me with the fixing of all the tags that need to be redone before they can be used by other software. I don't have the expertise to do this efficiently, but it does not seem to me to be too difficult a problem to remedy. My main gripe is with tags that contain more than one value for a single field. Might there be a way to use the batch converter to substitute the separate assignment of several values to one field with a single assignment separated by semi-colons? For instance, change

"ARTIST = x
ARTIST = y"

and

"COMPOSER = u
COMPOSER = v
COMPOSER = w"

to

"ARTIST = x; y" and "COMPOSER = u; v; w".

Such a script would save me an enormous amount of time and energy.

[csiron]

Re: Stuck With 30,000 Bad Tags And Elusive Support

Could you explain this problem a little better for the rest of us? I've just completed ripping of more than 5,000 discs, and I've had no tag issues with programs. Everything seems to be recognized by my retagging software and therefore can be manipulated as I wish when I do want to change tags. So I'm not sure what the compatibility issues could be. You mention composers, and I've run about 750 classical discs through without any problems ... but maybe my needs are different than yours. I'm just having trouble understanding what you see in, say, iTunes or tag&rename that is different than what you expect to see.

[Spoon]

Re: Stuck With 30,000 Bad Tags And Elusive Support

foobar2K? their codecs are generally written as well as they can be.

We follow the rules set down, if a program is not compatible with how multi-artists are set out by the documentation (for each format, m4a is '/', wma has multiple values exactly like FLAC, I bet Media Monkey could not read a WMA file with 2 artists, where as media player would, what does that tell you?...), then it is not multi artist compatible software.

[meme]

Re: Stuck With 30,000 Bad Tags And Elusive Support

I'll gladly explain my problem a bit more, and thank you for taking an interest.

The tag issues I've focused on all take place in lossless formats. I have tested FLAC tags, Monkey audio tags, and wav tags in a dozen different applications and none of them are fully functional. Though I have noticed related difficulties using mp3 tags I have not tested them extensively and can not vouch for their inadequacy.

The most glaring problem I've encountered occurs in fields where it is permissible to have more than one value. It is easiest to explain with an example. Consider a track that has more than one artist, say "Smooth" by Santana and Rob Thomas. If you move your mouse pointer over the track as it is listed in Windows Explorer you will see the dbPoweramp window open up with all the tag information. In it you will see the two artists listed as expected. The problem is evident when using other software because no other program will recognize the two artists using this convention. The exact result of the malfunction depends on the program, but in general one of two things happens - either the two names are combined into one name, or one of the two names is chosen and the other is ignored. The program Tag&Rename that you mentioned exhibits the first behavior and the official tag lists the track as having an artist named "Santana Rob Thomas". Continuing with this example, another track on the same album has the artist "Santana Cee-Lo Lauryn Hill".

This may seem like a small matter if very few of your tracks contain more than one artist, but for example, it is not uncommon in hip-hop music to have a large majority of tracks containing multiple artists, sometimes even 5 or 6 of them.

The real problem starts when you try to use an advanced audio player to orgranize your library. Again using the above examples, the correct behavior would be for the software to create separate "Artist" nodes for Santana, Rob Thomas, Cee-Lo and Lauryn Hill. Instead, either new artists are created using the strings "Santana Rob Thomas" and "Santana Cee-Lo Lauryn Hill", or only the last artist is used, leaving you with tracks that everyone knows were done by Santana listed only under Rob Thomas and Lauryn Hill.

These problems spill over into other fields as well and things just get even. I think this should give you the idea though.

[Spoon]

Re: Stuck With 30,000 Bad Tags And Elusive Support

I just do not see why we have to spend 1 hour adding options in the program (for all the codecs) to make it compatible with Media Monkey, when in reality it would take them 10 minutes to fix this on their end...Plus once your files are tagged wrong, they will remain wrong.

[Spoon]

Re: Stuck With 30,000 Bad Tags And Elusive Support

Well actually, I will add support to the DSP Effect 'id tag processing', it will be able to take multi artists and put them on 1 line: ie artist1; artist2 (be aware though, they are no longer multi artists as far as the tagging format is concerned, if MM were to release an update which fixes their issue you would be left will all your files incorrectly tagged).

[Des]

Re: Stuck With 30,000 Bad Tags And Elusive Support

Spoon, pardon my ignorance, to be absolutely clear, which way do you regard as the 'proper' way to handle multiple artists in tags,

One tag -

artist one; artist two; etc....

or

Multiple tags-

artist one
artist two
etc...

[meme]

Re: Stuck With 30,000 Bad Tags And Elusive Support

Thanks for the help Spoon. I happen to agree with everything you said. It would certainly be just as easy to fix the problem on their end, and I've already pleaded my case to them. The problem I ran into was that because most of the audio players do support the semi-colon format it is very difficult to argue convincingly that it is incorrect, especially when very few players use the 'correct' format. Your warning is also astute, and it's something i've been worrying about since I started nagging people about incompatibilities. I'm at a point now where I just want my library to work so I can leave everyone alone, and I think that the addition to the DSP effect you mentioned will finally do just that. Thanks again.

[Spoon]

Re: Stuck With 30,000 Bad Tags And Elusive Support

>Spoon, pardon my ignorance, to be absolutely clear, which way
>do you regard as the 'proper' way to handle multiple artists in tags,

Each audio format is different, mp3, wma, flac, m4a, monkeys audio all handle multiple artists differently, so the propper way is the right way for format.

[Des]

Re: Stuck With 30,000 Bad Tags And Elusive Support

What is the 'proper' way for FLAC?

[Spoon]

Re: Stuck With 30,000 Bad Tags And Elusive Support

Flac and Ogg vorbis are the same:

artist=artist1
artist=artist2

Media Monkey only reads the (first, or last) one.

[Des]

Re: Stuck With 30,000 Bad Tags And Elusive Support

Oh bollox! I've just 'repaired' the whole of my FLAC collection to the one line format. Sheesh :vmad:

[chileboy]

Re: Stuck With 30,000 Bad Tags And Elusive Support

Flac and Ogg vorbis are the same:

artist=artist1
artist=artist2

Media Monkey only reads the (first, or last) one.

Have I set something incorrectly? All of multi-artist tracks I've ripped to Flac (and Ogg) are in the single-line, semi-colon format.

[Spoon]

Re: Stuck With 30,000 Bad Tags And Elusive Support

Unless you set this option in the DSP effect 'ID Tag Processing', or your tags came from freedb (which does not know about multi artists), then they should be seperate (within the flac file), dbpoweramp will show as Artist; Artist2

[chileboy]

Re: Stuck With 30,000 Bad Tags And Elusive Support

Unless you set this option in the DSP effect 'ID Tag Processing', or your tags came from freedb (which does not know about multi artists), then they should be seperate (within the flac file), dbpoweramp will show as Artist; Artist2

I didn't even have DSP effects loaded...I just did so, but can't see anything about multi tags.

In any case, are you saying unless I loaded DSP effects, they should be separate anyway?

Am I being dense here?

- Mark