Hi,

Does anyone know of a good tool that can check my MP3 files for correctness, and preferably also display as much details about them as possible? I'm looking for info such as: is there an ID3 tag, is it correct, what's in it, is there an ID3v2 tag, is it correct, what's in it, is there a VBR header, is it correct, what does it say, is the audio stream correct, etc, etc...

Surprisingly, MusicMatch has a great interface for this in it's library. You can sort by anything stored in the id3 (v1 or v2) tag. You can load whole albums and mass edit them (very helpful when you want to assign the year to multiple tracks off the same album). Just a nice way to keep track of your tags and edit where there are problems. I found it also helps whenI miss type titles (NEw Order and New Order come up as seperate artists so I can make the artists consistant across ID3 tags).

Thanks for the tip. I happen to own MusicMatch, but I don't use the library part so I didn't know it could do things like that.

However, I'm looking more for a checker than an editor. I want something that I can throw a directory at and it'll tell me if all MP3's in it are correct (particularly, if they have correct VBR headers) and formatted the way I want (with only an ID3v2 tag and no ID3 tag, for example).

In what way do you mean you want something to tell you if the ID tag is correct? Do you mean something like it will tell you if you have an artist's name spelled incorrectly? Frankly, I don't see how a program would know this, unless it was the program ClemsonJeep was working on (lord knows we all would have loved to see that thing finished).

I believe I posted a link for and article on the other company that was developing a similar program, only they were doing it for that damn new Napster service.

DiGNAN
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, etc.

You are right of course; by 'correct' I mean that the tag is formatted correctly, that it adheres to the ID3 / ID3v2 'standard'.

Captain Chaos:

For checking the structure of the MP3 file itself, including VBR headers, you want MP3TRIM. This will tell you if the file is a "good" file or not. If MP3Trim gives the file a clean bill of health, then it should play on any playback software. Note that the free download version only works on one file at a time, and it has a file-size limit. The pay version does not have this limitation.

For playing with ID3 tags and straightening them out, you want MP3 TAG STUDIO. This is an incredibly powerful tool that allows you to do rule-based processing on every tag in your MP3 folder.

For looking at the bit rate and quality of all your MP3s as a group, you want ENCSPOT. This will tell you what encoder was used to create a given file and will make a judgement call as to whether it's good quality or not.



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Tony Fabris

In a FAQ please Tony, if it's not already

(list 6284, Mk1 S/N 00299 4GB blue [for sale]. Mk2 S/N 080000094 6GB blue)

Now that's what I was looking for. Thanks!

I've ripped all my MP3's myself using MusicMatch, it'll be interesting to see if encspot picks that up and what it says about the quality.

OK, done.

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Tony Fabris

He's good :-)

(list 6284, Mk1 S/N 00299 4GB blue [for sale]. Mk2 S/N 080000094 6GB blue)

He's good!

One of the few remaining Mk1 owners... #00015