What kind of file is this, and how was it encoded? I am assuming mp3 and VBR?
FLAC and this is a legit download of something I paid for.
Mp3tag does not manipulate the audio part of a song, only the metadata around a song.
Therefore it is very unlikely that Mp3tag has changed the bitrate (of the audio part).
Do you still have the original file with 1472kbps?
To test this, I took a copy of a FLAC file, and checked the bitrate before & after making a tag change. There was no diff in the bitrate.
I'm curious to hear how this resolves.
Yes, I do still have it.
I am not sure what this is then, it changed right here in front of my eyes lol
I tried it with another song and there's no change, but it did for one song of mine - it is only 17 seconds so I wonder if the small duration is why it changed.
On my music player it says otherwise though, so that's odd.
Which bitrate does MP3tag show in this process?
Can you please use something different than Windows Explorer's file properties to check the bitrate. Options are foobar2000, MediaInfo, or Mp3tag itself.
Windows Explorer is known for non-ideal support for FLAC and relying on the information displayed there is often a source of great confusion.
Hey, so I was given an explanation and I used the music player Symfonium; the dev said that it uses a different rounding number system. Though there was still a weird thing that happend in which an audio file I had was different in bitrate when I tagged it/changed it.
Even then, it wouldn't matter too much, yeah?
Also, thanks for telling me - how exactly is Windows' properties ideal, and the ones you mentioned best? Thanks!
I wrote non-ideal above, which I've used as a euphemism for broken, buggy, or incomplete. If you add, e.g., a 5MB cover to a FLAC file using the official metaflac command-line tool, current Windows File Explorer stops displaying the bitrate and tags and the properties are empty.
I'd not rely on what's displayed in Windows Explorer for FLAC, but use one of the other tools I've mentioned. It's not a bug in Mp3tag.
So simply put, foobar2000 is what you should use to get an accurate bitrate and such?
Just adding my 2 cents to this topic:
In this Reddit post, the most upvoted answer has this
You can calculate the size using the following formula:
x = length of song in seconds
y = bitrate in kilobits per second
(x * y) / 8
We divide by 8 to get the result in kilobytes(kb).
So, if Size (S) = (x * y) / 8, then bitrate (y) will be y = (S * 8) / x
I tested this formula with a VBR mp3 from my collection, where
(this is from foobar2000, by the way)
Applying the formula (I'm rounding the numbers as this is just an example)
5 MB (5 243 596 bytes) =~ 5244 kb
3:51.080 (10 190 628 samples) =~ 180 + 51 = 231 sec.
y = (5244 * 8) / 231 = 181 kb/s average
181 kb/s is somewhat different from 178 provided by foobar.
However, the 5244 kb of the file also includes an 85,8 kb cover art. So in order to get the bitrate of the "sound" data of the mp3 file, this extra data must be subtracted.
Adding this info to the previous equation:
5 MB (5 243 596 bytes) =~ 5244 kb - 85,8 =~ 5158 kb
y = (5158 * 8) / 231 = 178,6 ~~ 179 kb/s average
Again, this is approximate (and from a Reddit post), but the formula appears to work.
Since I don't know how Windows calculates bitrate, it's probably best to experiment with the various software tailored for dealing with audio files than the generic Properties window, and find out what suits you better.
Hope this helps.
You should also be aware of the various ways to describe bitrate. The simple one as described above includes frame and subframe headers and padding into the value. If you want the actual audio data bitrate, you have to remove those. For FLAC, frames can be from 24 bytes to 64k, and if you have 16 bytes of header those differences will create very different results.