MP3TAG can corrupt FLAC files after tagging. It appears it occurs when album art is large (>400x400) and is embedded in the FLAC tag. It doesn't corrupt every file, but a few for each album. The following is how I ripped and tagged my music (>400 GB):
Secure ripped to FLAC via EAC
Tagged with MP3TAG v2.42
I've tried converting the FLAC files back to WAV and comparing checksums to the original ripped WAVs for the files before and after using MP3TAG. The files after tagging do not match, but the files before using MP3TAG do match.
I've also run AudioTester on the tagged files and the ones that don't have matching checksums do in fact FAIL.
Additionally if you tag a track and then remove the tags the file size is smaller than the original. When you play the corrupted files they can stop altogether or have clicks/pops.
Below is an example from AudioTester showing that tracks 4, 5, 8, and 10 have been corrupted by MP3TAG:
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15 files scanned in 95.91 seconds
4 files failed
M:\Drive-By Truckers\Decoration Day [FLAC]\04 - Marry Me.flac (FRAME_CRC_MISMATCH @ 2m 13s)
M:\Drive-By Truckers\Decoration Day [FLAC]\05 - My Sweet Annette.flac (LOST_SYNC @ 2m 39s)
M:\Drive-By Truckers\Decoration Day [FLAC]\08 - Sounds Better In The Song.flac (LOST_SYNC @ 0m 49s)
M:\Drive-By Truckers\Decoration Day [FLAC]\10 - Your Daddy Hates Me.flac (LOST_SYNC @ 3m 30s)
11 files passed
M:\Drive-By Truckers\Decoration Day [FLAC]\01 - The Deeper In.flac
M:\Drive-By Truckers\Decoration Day [FLAC]\02 - Sink Hole.flac
M:\Drive-By Truckers\Decoration Day [FLAC]\03 - Hell No, I Ain't Happy.flac
M:\Drive-By Truckers\Decoration Day [FLAC]\06 - Outfit.flac
M:\Drive-By Truckers\Decoration Day [FLAC]\07 - Heathens.flac
M:\Drive-By Truckers\Decoration Day [FLAC]\09 - (Something's Got To) Give Pretty Soon.flac
M:\Drive-By Truckers\Decoration Day [FLAC]\11 - Careless.flac
M:\Drive-By Truckers\Decoration Day [FLAC]\12 - When The Pin Hits The Shell.flac
M:\Drive-By Truckers\Decoration Day [FLAC]\13 - Do It Yourself.flac
M:\Drive-By Truckers\Decoration Day [FLAC]\14 - Decoration Day.flac
M:\Drive-By Truckers\Decoration Day [FLAC]\15 - Loaded Gun In The Closet.flac
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Thanks for looking into this. I love MP3TAG's options and look, but this is obviously a serious problem.
Sorry, I wanted to spend some more time debugging the problem. After spending all day yesterday looking into it, it turns out that this is not a MP3Tag bug, but a problem with rsync's incremental backup. It was corrupting my files while leaving the file size and timestamp intact which is especially bad. Not only did it corrupt my FLAC files but mp3 and data files as well. FLAC was the only one I noticed because of their internal checksum.
There were two steps between my uncorrupted and corrupted FLAC files (MP3Tag and an rsync backup). I had wrongly thought it was a MP3Tag bug.
I'm sorry for posting the bug report and taking up your time. Please close this bug report and file it as 'No Bug'.
Thanks and keep up the excellent work (and sorry).
Thanks for taking the time to investigate this further and for talking back! To be honest, it would have been a huge surprise to me if such a bug wasn't reported before.
would it be possible for you to let me know more about the rsync problem? (You could pm me or send me an email, if you don’t won’t to clutter this thread.)
I’m currently setting up a backup strategy that involves rsyncing to my Linux server from Windows (using DeltaCopy and a patched cygwin1.dll). It would turn out to be a real problem if rsync did something wrong — one of its great benefits being "partial" file transfers (i.e., not needing to copy the whole big FLAC files when only tags were changed).
