MP3Tag has always been the gold standard in MP3 tag editors, free or paid.
DB Poweramp has 40 million users been around for decades and is my gold standard.
Thanks
For manual (album-wise) tagging I have been using Tag & Rename for a decade.
For automated (mass) tagging, I switched to bliss a year ago.
For Ripping I have been a dbPoweramp customer for 13 years, and since it does my initial tagging when I rip CDs eg. with dbPoweramp Batch Ripper with an Acronova Nimbie, then that is the third part of the tagging setup in this house.
Mind you, none of the tools I listed are free, but this thread is for all file tagging utilities. Over the years I have tried some free software (MP3Tag, Picard, etc.) but nothing has satisfied me past what I have listed above.
-Chris
I also use dbPowerAmp but not usually for tagging. Plus it’s not free and even if one buys a license to the program when a major update to dbPowerAmp is released they want you buy it again to get the update. Not cool.
I use dbpoweramp for ripping and converting. I use mp3tag for all my tagging edits and cleanup. Very powerful, particularly for batch processing. Note that mp3tag handles all sorts of files, not just mp3 (e.g., FLAC, ALAC, WAV, m4a, mp3, etc.). There’s some “fake” mp3tag locations. Be sure and download from here:
I use
Jriver basic tagging , Custom tags and Ripping
Tag & Rename
For lookup
MusiCHI Tagger
SongKong
Yes Software Junkie , but they each have their pluses I use all 4 actively
That’s exactly how I do things. dbPowerAmp is great for ripping and converting and MP3Tag is great for tagging. Plus I use this ancient file renaming utility, called “Renamer” duh, to handle many of the file renaming tasks with MP3Tag handling many other file renaming tasks. I just love free/share ware.
“Renamer was written by Albert Bertilsson in 2002” and the website link is no longer valid. Believe it or not, the program continues to work perfectly in Window 10, just as it did in all other versions of Windows since 2002. A tiny little program that does one thing and only one thing but does it really, really well. And it’s not a resource hog. The best kind of program.
I have Tag & Rename rename the files based on the tags, so all files name have the same format (artist, album, rack name, track number).
Well, cool if you like being able to eat and pay rent/mortgage as a developer. Development work has to be paid for somehow and the old version will keep doing the job for some time to come. One solution is to get all your CDs ripped and stop buying physical media. I started with Tidal at the end of last year. Had to buy CDs by one artist that isn’t on any streaming service yet, but not expecting to have to buy anymore in future.
So you’re okay with this scenario:
Roon 2.0 is released and it being a major update (1.6 to 2.0) all lifetime subscribers are told that while their subscription to Roon 1.6 is still valid in order to use Roon 2.0 they will need to buy a new lifetime subscription to Roon 2.0.
Cool! After all living in Westchester, NY is expensive.
I think Roon and dbPoweramp have two different subscription models. With dbPoweramp you buy a version and updates to it and the right to use it in perpetuum. The updates are for the version you buy. I certainly hope that Roon really means it when they sell you a lifetime subscription for Roon, which is another thing.
This discussion is getting off topic.
That’s true. Ldet’s get back to praising MP3Tag!
Back in the day when I used Windows mp3tag was my tagger of choice.
In 95 I switched to Linux as my OS and for a while ran mp3tag using Wine, however some things don’t work as expected so frustration set in. I was ready to code my own tagger when I happened on puddletag during its initial development and ended up collaborating with the developer to produce a tagger based on what we liked about mp3tag plus all the things we wished mp3tag would do. I’ve never found a more versatile tagger and have never looked back.
Hi mate,
How do you find SongKong and MusiCHI?
You coders make me so jealous, even coders do tend to show off. 
Last time I coded anything was in my 20’s. I’m no coder, just a hobbyist. Whilst I’m responsible for many of the ideas in puddletag, I didn’t contribute a single line of code. Beyond requirements my only contribution was extensive testing before it was released publicly.
Well then my apologies 
So let me rephrase my comment: You Linux users make me so jealous 
Hi
They are very different beasts
SongKong uses the MusicBrainz & Discogs db to lookup metadata. If the album in question is a specific release it is very good. I have used it a lot and it fills in a lot of metadata with little effort. Just drag an album folder onto the UI and press start.
The only word of warning is that in classical stuff if you have discs “split” from Big Boxes it tends to not match to a release and then matches the individual tracks and can cause some issues. I generally work on a copy before dropping into the main library
MuisCHI is well worth a try . I have only used it for Classical although I undertstand it is equally good fro Jazz
Its a bit rigid in its format (as is its developer Phillipe) eg all composers will be Beethoven, Ludwig van (17xx-18yy) and you can’t change (configure) that and Roon doesn’t recognize that format (SongKong gives Ludwig van Beethoven which Roon likes) but you manually edit back to whatever format you want
Its good part is in Composition management, it has MusiClean built in which looks up a composition its own db. If there is any issues it stops and asks for a selection rather than just adding something wrong. You can configure how it is displayed . Each part of a Composition name can be included or re positioned
It standardizes Composition Name, Composer Name & Album Artist. It can also be configure to populate Custom Tags eg if you want Composition transferred to Work it can do that
The second and best part is the Text Processing feature which is second to none , it finds and replaces, splits text against delimiters like ; : - etc . This is particularly useful to split off The Movement / Part from a file name . Getting Composition/Movement or Work/Part straight is the key to getting things right in Roon classical stuff
I use both for cleaning up classical albums , they both have the good points
SongKong has a demo that doesn’t save changes so you can see what it does , MusiCHI has a 30 day free fully functional demo so try away is my best advice .
Neither is very expensive SongKong is 30 UKP , MusiCHI , if you a Roon user you only need the Tagger Portion the rest is Ripper, Player and management modules which wont interest you . Tagger is 20 Euro
Hope this helps
What I like about the meta data tagging that is part of Perfect Tunes is its ability to highlight artist, album name (anything reoccurring) and change it at same time, across all tracks in an album you have selected. Was a huge time saver with album splitting problems I had initially. For the stuff I hadn’t created myself. The fact the metatagging integrates into windows explorer. Means its always there with a right click.
Someone I knew ripped his entire collection to lossless wav with only album name on folder again perfectunes listened to tracks and 88% was fixed automatically in 2010. The meta tagging is also live, so once you type billy you can select Billy Idol from list.
Embedding pictures of album cover in files is handy too. Works with FLAC MP3. Makes getting rid of grey panels in Roon a breeze. Again just make sure to highlight all tracks so they all have album cover imbedded. EDIT would still recommend a folder.jpg. So an album cover photo saved as folder.jpg file within the folder where the music tracks are. If dealing with double album with two directories you would want a picture in each folder. Roon will display different covers when listed by album of artist.
At the end of the day what works for you and your collection is best for you. Myself I don’t mind paying for quality. I will request support for DSD as that doesn’t yet seem to be supported.