Year tag lost when using foobar

2024-02-05 17:15:08

This is my first post about foobar2000 and the first time I am using it.
I have a number of music albums read from CDs mainly in just two formats: FLAC and mp3.
I have been working for years with MediaMonkey 4 and mp3tag for tagging, reviewing, correcting, etc.
For ripping CDs I used MediaMonkey and dbPoweramp for conversion to mp3.

Recently I worked with mp3gain for volume leveling in mp3 and MediaMonkey Volume Analyzer for FLAC.
When I read about EBU R128 thought to use foobar just for leveling both mp3 and FLAC formats.

The first problem I have found using foobar is that I am losing the YEAR tag shown in MediaMonkey and mp3tag for mp3 tracks. It seems that foobar adds a DATE tag every time I scan an album for leveling, and then the field YEAR stands in the song (as I can see through dbPoweramp Edit ID-tag) along with the new DATE tag, but they are lost in MediaMonkey and mp3tag.

Any way to solve this through foobar preferences or any other way?

Re: Year tag lost when using foobar

Reply #1 – 2024-02-06 11:16:52

Would be helpful if you shared a sample file. If the issue is reproducible, sharing a sample that hasn't been touched by foobar2000 would be ideal.

MP3 tag situation is less than ideal. The format doesn't have any official tag format but ID3 is the de facto tag type as it was the first to get in the game. There are numerous different versions of ID3 tags and different software can only handle certain versions of them, and most with various levels of bugs. foobar2000 tries to be as compatible with popular software as possible out of the box. Anyway, your files may also have APEv2 tags that contain nothing but gain undo information stored by Mp3gain.

I have no guesses how or why you would lose year tag, but if we can see how it's stored we can figure it out.

Re: Year tag lost when using foobar

Reply #2 – 2024-02-06 17:14:14

I think I should first clarify my configuration of tags handling in the different programs:

In Mediamonkey: Write ID3v2 ASCII+UTF16 (gives option for v1 or v1+v2, but not for APE)
Mp3tag: for mp3: Read ID3v1+v2, Write v2.3 UTF16, Delete v1
Mp3tag: for FLAC: Read ID3v1 + APE, Write APEv2, Delete ID3v1
foobar: for mp3: Write ID3v2.3, use padding, map TPE2 to AlbumArtist
foobar for Vorbis & FLAC: More compatible with various software

Now I'll try to send you an mp3 track not seen by foobar (flac is working fine)
I have checked that another songs from the same album have lost the year when analyzed from foobar (in fact the year is there, but it seems that foobar adds a date tag that may cause to Mediamonkey and mp3tag not to see the year).

Thanks for your help



[moderator edit: attachment removed]

Re: Year tag lost when using foobar

Reply #3 – 2024-02-07 07:24:51

Thanks for the sample. For some reason retagging that file triggers foobar2000 to save the date as a custom text tag. That is indeed a problem that takes Peter to fix.

Re: Year tag lost when using foobar

Reply #4 – 2024-02-07 08:28:19

Ok. I'll wait for the foobar solution and use mp3gain by now. Thanks a lot, Case

Re: Year tag lost when using foobar

Reply #5 – 2024-02-07 12:51:19

Problem noted, thanks for reporting.
I've got the file and will look into it shortly.