Audacious

If the file contains a ID3v2 tag, Audacious will never write an APE tag. It will by default write an ID3v2.4 tag to the end of the file. I'm not familiar with mp3val but my guess is that it is not reading the tag correctly.

Thanks for prompt response and clarification.
I suspected it was mp3val since the last release is 3 years old now and the project does not look to be too actively developed.

I'm a bit disappointed that I can't edit tags in Audacious. Even if I make a small change to an existing ID3 tag, mp3val reports "garbage at the end of the file" and that doesn't leave me with a warm feeling that my venerable Sansa Clip will read the tag correctly. In my last post, I chalked it up to mp3val, but I've since tried tag editing with foobar2000 (through wine) and Clementine (which uses an embedded version of taglib from git/svn) and they can edit/write ID3v2 tags that don't cause mp3val to choke. Audacious must be doing something wrong.

P.S. I've stripped all of the APE tags from my collection with a handy python script, so we're dealing strictly with ID3 here.

Some Dude wrote:

... they can edit/write ID3v2 tags that don't cause mp3val to choke. Audacious must be doing something wrong.

Statements like this only demonstrate your ignorance of the situation.

ID3 is not a stable standard; there are four different versions of it. Audacious uses the most recent version of the standard (ID3v2.4). If you want tags that can be read by older software, you will probably need to use a more advanced tag editor that allows you to choose what type of ID3 tag to write. I seem to remember EasyTag having an option for this.

I agree that this is a bad situation, and unfortunately it will continue to cause headaches until 1) people stop releasing backward-incompatible versions of the ID3 standard and 2) enough time passes that all software in use supports the current version of the standard.

For the time being, I recommend that you don't use Audacious for tag editing if you need compatibility with older software. There simply aren't enough developers working on Audacious to make it as flexible as something like EasyTag.

John, I'm not ignorant about it. You are. It has nothing to do with "old software" (sorry if my previous post led you to assume that). I realize the the whole standard of ID3 tagging (and even mp3 itself) is not ideal, but even if I set foobar2000 to explicitly write ID3v2.4 tags, mp3val can recognize them. So why can't audacious write a compatible fscking ID3v2 tag to save its life?

I could give you a more technical explanation, but since you wouldn't believe me anyway, I don't see the point. Go write your own music player, if you know so much.

Edit: Or write a patch.

Ooh, Ooh, Oh, let me guess: Audacious implements the standard "correctly", but every other program does it differently?

[quote]Or write a patch.[/quote]
Wait, who's the developer here? You won't even acknowledge that there's an issue/problem, so why the hell would I write a patch?

You're talking to yourself at this point ...