MP3/Audio Tagging Software

[MorningSunshine]

Hey everyone, recently, I finally made the switch from PC to Mac

I am very pleased with my experience so far and have mostly found Mac counterparts to some PC exclusive applications that I used. However, I have searched but not found a good replacement for Mp3tag on the PC. I searched many threads on various forums such as this one but have yet to find a program that fits my needs.

Ideally, I would like the program to have:

• Filename to tag conversion/Tag to filename conversion
• Ability to convert between various ID3 versions (i.e ID3v2.3 to ID3v2.4)
• Musicbrainz/other databases for album art and tags
• Replay gain support
• Versatile batch/macro tagging functions

Budget is not a problem for me but a cheaper/free solution is always better

I am hoping that some of you Mac gurus can share some information to help someone make a smoother transition from PC to Mac.

Thanks guys!

 

[GGJstudios]

While it may not satisfy all your requirements, I've had great success using iTunes along with Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes, which is a great resource for managing your iTunes tags and files.

File Renamer
Filenames to Song Names
Track Parser v1.3.1

 

[neuroshock]

The problems i find with itunes is that if you edit the mp3 tags inside itunes (for example if you change artist or album name or song title etc etc) it will only appear changed under itunes. So basically the orginal mp3 tags still remain the same and when u open the mp3 with another software or under a different environment such as windows or linux, the mp3 has the older tags and not the ones you edited in itunes.

i've been trying to find a solid mp3 tagger myself with no luck so far and i'd like to shy away from audacity for editing something as simple as mp3 tags

do those scripts you posted change the tags of the original mp3?

 

[MorningSunshine]

While it may not satisfy all your requirements, I've had great success using iTunes along with Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes, which is a great resource for managing your iTunes tags and files.

File Renamer
Filenames to Song Names
Track Parser v1.3.1

Thanks, but I kind of stayed away from iTunes due to its lack of replay gain support. Those scripts look really useful but I'm wondering if there are any standalone alternatives that offer the same functionality.

Neuroshock, what you could do to ensure that your tags are written to the MP3 file instead of iTunes's library is to right click a file and select "Convert ID3 tags".

 

[peebles]

Try Clementine. Never went back to iTunes.

http://www.clementine-player.org/

 

[GGJstudios]

Thanks, but I kind of stayed away from iTunes due to its lack of replay gain support.

Can you explain further what you mean by that?

 

[MorningSunshine]

Thanks for the suggestion peebles, Clementine looks interesting, I'll look into it

Can you explain further what you mean by that?

Replaygain is a standard that almost all music players except iTunes have adopted. It is a value stored in an ID3 tag that pretty much tells the music player how loud it should play the song. Through the use of Replaygain, the relative loudness of all songs in a music library can be normalized so there are no cases where one song is much louder than another.

iTunes has an alternative to Replaygain with which you may be familiar called Soundcheck. However, only iTunes supports Soundcheck; no other music players have support for Soundcheck. Because I will access my music in a variety of OS's and music players, I will need to use Replaygain which is widely supported. There are also a variety of reasons of why I think Soundcheck is vastly inferior to Replaygain but I wont go into that

Keep the suggestions coming! Thanks everyone.

 

[GGJstudios]

Because I will access my music in a variety of OS's and music players, I will need to use Replaygain which is widely supported.

Thanks for the explanation. Yes, I was thinking about Sound Check, unaware that you use a variety of music players. I've used iTunes on both Windows and Mac and Sound Check works fine on those. Good luck in your search.

The problems i find with itunes is that if you edit the mp3 tags inside itunes (for example if you change artist or album name or song title etc etc) it will only appear changed under itunes.

do those scripts you posted change the tags of the original mp3?

All edits I've made to mp3 tags from within iTunes are stored in the file. If I copy those files to a Windows PC, for example, the edited tags show up, even if I edited them with scripts such as the ones I posted.