OK so I can get pretty OCD about my music tracks. I like to see the album art, the artist needs to be spelled right and uniform, I don't like any junk in the comments area, etc. I have everything just the way I want it in iTunes however whenever I copy a track and move it somewhere else, or use another audio player to play it, the details are all jacked up or there's no album art. I tried converting all my ID3 tags to version 2.3 but still it doesn't always work. Then I found out there's ID3 tag editors... I guess my question is can you tag a single song with multiple tags like version 1.0, 1.1, 2.2 etc, basically all the ID3 tags? And will doing that ensure wherever I take the audio tracks that the information is available and correct? And if not what do I need to do to make that happen? Thanks all!
You need to provide more info about your basic problem. You use itunes what else do you use that doesn't display the info they way you like to see it? Album art is linked by your app such as itunes. The link is in itunes so you can't expect to see it somewhere else. You really need to be careful with your tags. Most audio corruption occurs in the tag info. Yes, by screwing around with your tags you can make your tune unplayable. That looks to me where you are headed. I am sure if you have 6 versions of tag info in your file it will be garbage. Is that what you want? You need to figure out what you NEED to do and do just that. The more you put into your audio file the more likely you will screw it up.
Well you answered a lot of my questions right there. So you can have multiple ID3 tags, but having to many will render some files unplayable. I guess also I made the mistake of thinking the album art could be saved in the tag information as well. What I'm looking for is I use iTunes, WinAmp, and Windows Media Player depending on where I'm at. I'm looking for an ID3 tag that will be read and accepted by all three players. As I mentioned earlier I was hoping to keep the album art associated with the file if it was possible. Also now I have another question. Once I find what ID3 tag works the best for those three apps, should I strip off all ID3 tags I have currently and just re-encode them with the one?
The tag versions share the same data. They all have the important ones and that data will only be in one spot. There will only be one tag called title. The different versions may support more tag names and bigger tags. Each is a super set of the last. No one much care about any new tag names and you can add your own. Just do not expect any other app to read that info. Your problem probably stems from using itunes to add your tag info. Try mp3tag. Those changes should be viewable to all 3 of the apps mentioned. You will only have the the version your version of mp3tag supports. There is not a huge difference between the different versions. That was not your problem. mp3tag only deals with maybe 6 important tags. Itunes shoves all sorts of crap into the files. It may use 20-30 tags. itunes tries its best not to play nice with other apps. They don't want you to be able to use a different player. I would not use it to tag anything. By design, you will only be able to view that work from itunes. You can stuff pictures into the file but I strongly recommend you do not do that. The more you put into an mp3 the better change you have to screw it up. Many players will default to front.jpg in an album folder as the art work.
As you found out, iTunes has there own way of tagging..That said SW players (e.g. MediaMonkey, WinAmp, have no problem playing the tracks and displaying tags with iTunes(AAC) files..Not sure how WMP handles them, b/c--- I don't use it.. If HDD space is no issue, why not keep different libraries?..Those ripped and tagged via iTunes, and those tagged other wise(ID3v2.3, ID3v1.1 etc.)..Best of both worlds..
WMP dosen't play AAC anymore than itunes plays WMA files. I was under the impression that these were mp3s (ID3). I also have 2 libraries. One has apple formats the other has the rest. I use Media Monkey to play everything except apple tunes. It will play them but it requires Quicktime. I prefer to use Winamp to play my AAC files because it does not need Quicktime.
