MP3 Compare

[Tom]

Do you have an MP3 TAG Editor?

Yup -- I (mainly) use MP3/Tag Studio. The developer isn't much for keeping up with bug reports, but overall it's got a really good and versatile design. (BTW, I do love SoftPointer's AudioShell and use it all the time.)

Maybe you can post one of your MP3 files that has the player controls disabled, to see if they are disabled with my install.

Be glad to. I tried checking it with and without a tag, but there was no change. (Tag Studio offers a Shell Extension, so you can strip/copy/paste tags right from the Explorer context menu, among other things.) The one I'm posting is about a meg -- it's very low res, but it'll give you something to mess with.

The board won't let me upload it, but you can get it here.

[RunnerBiker]

I have MP3/Tag Studio too. It does some things better than Tag&Rename, but in general I prefer Tag&Rename. MP3/Tag Studio lets me scour all the files in a directory to remove undocumented frames like PRIV and NCON.

I believe Windows Media Player or one if its addons is writing the PRIV tags into the MP3s. I wish I could figure out how to stop that.

I downloaded your file. The player controls are enabled for me, and I confirmed that you removed the tag completely.

Did you see the discussion about Sherlock and CodecTweakTool earlier in this thread? Have you run them to see what they have to say?

[Tom]

I have MP3/Tag Studio too. It does some things better than Tag&Rename, but in general I prefer Tag&Rename.

Fair enough.

I believe Windows Media Player or one if its addons is writing the PRIV tags into the MP3s. I wish I could figure out how to stop that.

Me too! I guess you could try locking the files, since you don't need to edit them very often (if ever). It's pretty arrogant for WMP to modify files just because it plays them. MS Office apps do the same thing -- modify files just because you opened them, even if you don't make any changes. Definitely annoying, if for nothing else than the senseless additional file & drive fragmentation over time.

Did you see the discussion about Sherlock and CodecTweakTool earlier in this thread? Have you run them to see what they have to say?

See it? I started it. They're not reporting any problems, and nothing else (I'm talking about over a dozen audio utils or players) has a problem with MP3s on my system. It's just that none of the others make it easy to do a side-by-side audio comparison.

[RunnerBiker]

See it? I started it.

Of course you did. Sorry I didn't look back in the thread to verify the poster.

I did a trial install of BC3 (Beta 462) on my wife's computer (Win XP Home SP3). The player controls are not dimmed on her PC when analyzing the shenandoahlowres.mp3 file either.

I started collecting MP3 files that dim the player controls on my PC. I have about 25 right now. The unique thing about them is that the first audio frame is at offset 2,000(Hex) or higher into the file. If I remove the tag so the first audio frame is at offset 0 (Hex or Decimal), the player controls are not dimmed.

In three of the MP3 files, the first audio frame is past offset 2,000(Hex), yet the player controls are not dimmed. In fact one of those files has a huge APIC (picture) tag (1,393,575 bytes decimal). The first audio frame is at offset 15,453B(Hex) and the player controls are not dimmed.

On my wife's computer, all 25 files dim the player controls. The three that enable the player controls on my PC do not enable the player controls on her's. The player controls are enabled for the shenandoahlowres.mp3 file on her PC.

I tried to discover the author of the AAC_Parser.ax file but was unsuccessful. If that one was problematic, maybe another .ax file written by the same company is causing a problem too.

[Tom]

Of course you did. Sorry I didn't look back in the thread to verify the poster.

Heh! No harm done -- I'm just being difficult.

The player controls are not dimmed on her PC when analyzing the shenandoahlowres.mp3 file either.

By the way, the website kind of eats filenames apparently -- the original filename was "Shenandoah (low res).mp3". Oh well -- next time I'll try underscores or something.

I started collecting MP3 files that dim the player controls on my PC.

Well, everybody needs a hobby. No, seriously, you've been very thorough in your approach -- but I'm not sure what else can be done.

I tried to discover the author of the AAC_Parser.ax file but was unsuccessful. If that one was problematic, maybe another .ax file written by the same company is causing a problem too.

That makes sense -- but heck, not including the DLL cache in Windows, there're 186 .AX files on my system, so lotsa luck making sense out of that collection.