I've tried a number of MP3 tag programs: MP3Tag Studio, ID3TagIt, Tag&Rename (which I bought and deeply regret) and a few others. Dr.Tag www.drtag.de is by far the best I've ever used however. It's the most intuitive and provides the most useful interface for multi-tagging files regardless of their location.

I'm wondering if anyone's found anything worthy of displacing this as my current favourite. I'd like to register it and would feel fairly comfortable doing so, but don't want to be stuck with un-used programs if there's something else out there better deserving my money. Tag&Rename burned me because it "looked" like it fit the bill and I jumped on it too fast. I really can't stand its interface - very weak.

I'm only surprised I haven't seen more people using Dr.Tag as it's a lot better than the programs I've mentioned above, IMO.

Bruno

What does this do that T&R doesn't other than load an entire drive of MP3s? I didnt see any FreeDB or AllMusic interface but maybe I overlooked them.

No it doesn't do FreeDB or Allmusic.com but I still find it to be the quickest and easiest way to fix tags, copy from v1 to v2, rename, sort into directories etc.

I did try Tag & Rename but it just doesn't agree with me. Nothing in particular, everything in general.

tag & rename is great! they could deal with some simplification , but it's great.

i just will the tag info could be filled out for indiviual songs, because I rarely have the album. having the album is lame.

Dunno man, I just downloaded DrTag and been playing with it. I've been using Tag & Rename for a long time now.... I think I'll be sticking with it, maybe it's just because I'm used to the rich feature set offered by Tag & Rename and I'm used to it. I just don't see any clear advantages to this program.

I can see though why you'd like to use this program as a means to tag multiple files in multiple directories, although Tag & rename does this as well, DrTag looks like it might be easier.

My primary reasons for sticking with Tag & Rename are, I kinda like it's interface, I'm used to it though. I like it's ability to pull information from various online databases, thats probably what I use most (although I hate the fact that not a one of these databases can catagorize frickin genres right, I'm sorry Macy Gray is not Rap! another pet peeve is "Various" is not a frickin artist!).

I didn't play with DrTag that long to be fair and will continue to jerk around with it. But I'm not ready to give up T&R just yet, but more so I can't agree that DrTag is better.

I'd be willing to bet that you won't find one you like better, and even if there is one, who's to say we know what it would be? I think you're getting down to the personal preferences part of all this. I enjoy MP3 Tag Studio, I find it very easy to use and very fast at its job. I don't need anything else. But you find this other program better, that's cool too.

Heck, I despise all Adobe products, but other people would defend them to their deaths. Who knows what it is

I'd agree that most of what we're talking about is personal prefrence. I mean no one is stating that a mentioned program doesn't work. I basically use MP3 Tag Studio because Magnus Brading frequents the site and uses us for beta and feature issues.

i personally use both tag and rename (for the renaming and id3v1->v2 copy) and mp3 tag studio (for the tag manipulation). i would use mp3 tag studio exclusively, if it remembered individual schemes seperately for renaming and tag manipulation, but alas, i got shot down by magnus telling me that he doesnt want to confuse the end user.

i use UltraTagger (http://www.ultratagger.com/). my roommate has used this to rename about 50 gigs and more worth of mp3s.

basically, get someone else to do it for you so you don't have to.

Given that your ripping everything again, why doesn't the ripper your using handle creating all the tags?

have you tried mp3 collector from www.collectorz.com? I will look into drtag.de for myself, i was wondering the same thing, and looking for a similar program to compair mp3 collector to.

MP3 Tag Studio is a pretty cool app. I have been utilizing it for a year or so and it does everything that i need it to do.

Dr.Tag in its current version doesn't have FreeDB nor AllMusic ripping (this isn't exactly legal BTW). I don't realy care about that funcitonality because I found it didn't work well at all in Tag and Rename. It's useful if you have an entire album, but when I have an entire album I already also have all the correct tag info. I pull it with my ripping program from FreeDB before encoding.

So I need something that can manipulate any number of files, from 1 to dozens or hundreds. I need to be able to sort the files in a visual list by different criteria - be it filename or a specific tag, regardless of what folder the actual file is located in (this I could not do with MP3 Tag Studio and it was a right pain in the ass).

When tagging multiple files I like to see tag fields marked to show they have content that differsm versus no content (ie. colour coding the text field). I also like a program to put in actual text for fields that do match between files (Tag and Rename didn't do this). I found that T&R was just getting little bits added to it to patch missing funcitonality, but what itreally needed was a complete re-design.

So I'm looking for something that does what Dr.Tag does, but might do it even better. Its multi-tagging is what I was asking for a couple of years ago when I first saw the simple aproach taken by Apple with iTunes (again, colour coded fields). Another important criteria is that the program receive a good amount of updating and bug fixeing as needed. I used ID3TagIt for a while but it hasn't been updated in ages and it's starting to show. I like programs that do a decent job f following established and intuitive conventions. So far Dr.Tag is the most intuitive one I've tried. It's just based on elements you'd already be familiar with from using Explorer and knowing something about Tags.

Bruno

Hahaha. Well, Adobe has no real competition. Their software can use some improvement, but there's still no solution as complete in the majority of their segments. I have not used anything else that I find as useful as Photoshop. Nor Illustrator. I can't stand Quark Express, but I quite like Adobe's InDesign. GoLive (though a product bought by Adobe originally) works well for me as well. Damn, I'm starting to feel like an Adobe poster child. They did get their asses handed to them in Font Management... Type Manager Deluxe as a good effort but quickly left behind by the newer versions of Suitcase (currently owned by Extensis).

Ok, we're off topic for sure. It's just a coincidence that I just completed my first large production run brochure using InDesign last week though (for my parent's cottage resort).

Bruno

I'm with you on Dr. Tag. I did buckle down and register, and have been happy. I know what you mean though, the only feature I would like added, would be the ability to get tag info from the net like Tag & Rename does. I'd be completely satisified. But it's strong points still make it the best for my use.

Well, Adobe has no real competition

Oh, I agree, and that makes it worse!

I definitely think that Adobe has the best products in the segments (and price range) that they're in, and they work very well, but the interface is just horrible to me. I mean, every single time I start Premiere, I have to go through 3 drop-down menus to tell the program to preview my project from RAM instead of from disk. That just shouldn't be. If there's a permanent setting, it should be easier to find!

Anyway, I just hate using them. I use programs that work best for me on the level I need to use them, and Paint Shop Pro has Photoshop totally beat at the very basic level I'm using it.

Oops, sorry to contribute to the off-topic