Weird Issue When Modifying the Album Artist Tag

[Theodor]

When ripping and tagging an audio CD yesterday, I noticed a weird issue that was not there before. (No setting changes or MB updates happened since the last rip.)
MB writes the Album Artist tag to "Various Artists" and does not accept changes to that value. I can change any other arbitrary tags so it is no file permission problem (operating on files that MB created in the process of ripping makes that improbably, anyway). I do not use any other tagging tools or media players related to music or anything that monitors the relevant directories. If I change the Album Artist tag externally and refresh the library, MB shows the externally changed value but it seems to keep the wrong value in its database. The Log reads: "Files with tag values that differ to the MusicBee database" and lists the relevant files and if I synchronize the tags, they revert back to Various Artists. The problem persists after an update to the last MB version, a reboot, re-ripping the files and converting the files and then re-tagging the converted files.
The problem seems to not be limited to (newly) ripped files. I changed an "old" file's Album Artist value, which then also had the "Various Artist" value instead of what I had written into the field.

This has to be a freak bug. I could not discover anything similar in this forum. Is there anything I can check to get a better understanding of what is happening here? Log remains silent apart from listing the files that "differ to the Musicbee database".

Any help would be much appreciated.

[psychoadept]

Can you provide a screenshot of the tag editor for an affected file? Is this actually a various artists album? Was that the value when the files were ripped?

[Theodor]

Thank you very much for getting back to my issue!
No, the original value was not "Various Artists" -- see the screenshots below. As I said, this behavior does not seem to be limited to newly ripped files at this point. And I didn't change anything in the MusicBee settings for the last months (years?) to the best of my knowledge and this issue seems new.

So here is a "slide show":
1) This is what the automatic detection (correctly) figures out. I leave all tags alone and just hit "Start Rip".


2) This is the resulting album in my inbox, now mysteriously by "Various Artists"


3) The corresponding tag editor window


4) I change the Album Artist tag -- it makes no difference whether I just change one track or all tracks at a time. Changes are not applied.


5) I change a different tag -- here, it is the Artist tag.


6) Changes to Artist are applied, whereas changes to Album Artist are not applied.

[psychoadept]

That's a strange one for sure. Do you by any chance have the Additional Tagging & Reporting Tools plugin installed?

[Steven]

Is 'iTunes Compilation' ticked in the tag editor settings tab?

[Theodor]

No, the iTunes Compilation checkbox is not ticked. But I indeed have the Additional Tagging Tools plugin installed.

[Theodor]

Okay, it was the Addiditonal Tagging Tools! Perhaps because my version was too old? I noticed a ticked preset in its ASR dialog that was responsible. (It must have interfered with the tagging. Among other things, it wrote "Various Artists" to Album Artist. Didn't know that it could process files beyond the ASR dialog.) I could not untick the checkbox but replacing the Tagging Tools with the up-to-date version helped. Now everything works again as expected.

Thank you very much for help!

I said it before but not in this thread so here it goes: Musicbee is incredibly valuable to me and my enjoying of music. I cannot stress that enough. Thank you.

[phred]

Didn't know that it could process files beyond the ASR dialog.)

Any preset that is ticked in ASR will be automatically applied whether or not ASR is open. In other words, with ASR closed, a ticked preset will be applied whenever a file meeting the criteria of the present is encountered.

[Theodor]

Thank you for the important clarification! So the non-user-related part of the mystery has come down to why I was unable to untick the preset once I noticed it and that might have been due to my using too old a plugin version.

[phred]

why I was unable to untick the preset once I noticed it and that might have been due to my using too old a plugin version.

I can't imagine why an older version of the plugin would not allow the disabling of a ticked preset, but it sounds like you've got it resolved now that you've updated the plugin.

Just a word of advice - I have often mistakenly enabled a preset when all I want to do is select it for immediate use. What I've noticed I'm doing is clicking close to the left side, near the tick box, and not noticing I've actually ticked it. I've trained myself to use the right side when selecting.

[Theodor]

Thank you, that is very valuable advice! I will keep that in mind 

[phred]

You're welcome. I'm always happy to help and see something come to a successful conclusion.