True Audio + id3v2 tagging vs Audacious

**andrew.46** · April 13th, 2015

I have been experimenting with the True Audio files produced with ttaenc (as a precurser to adding tta support to abcde) and it appears that vlc and MPlayer are happy with id3v2 tagged TTA files but Audacious is not. I have the following sample file for testing:

Code:

wget http://www.andrews-corner.org/samples/luckynight.tta

Which was initially produced with ttaenc and then tagged as follows:

Code:

id3v2 --album "Treasure Quest Soundtrack" \
      --artist "Jody Marie Gnant" \
      --track "9" \
      --song "Lucky Night" \
      --comment "1-minute song sample demonstrating True Audio (TTA) compression" \
      --genre "Soundtrack" \
      --year "1995" \
      luckynight.tta

Can anybody confirm that Audacious chokes on the tagged file? And I would love to know a method to tag TTA files and keep audacious happy as well...

Edit: Error message is:

Code:

andrew@ilium~/media/luckynight/test$ audacious luckynight.tta 
ERROR mpg123.cc:238 [read_tuple]: mpg123 probe error for file:///home/andrew/media/luckynight/test/luckynight.tta: Message: I am done with this track.
ERROR mpg123.cc:238 [read_tuple]: mpg123 probe error for file:///home/andrew/media/luckynight/test/luckynight.tta: Message: I am done with this track.
ERROR util.cc:180 [audgui_simple_message]: Error opening file:///home/andrew/media/luckynight/test/luckynight.tta:
Error reading metadata
andrew@ilium~/media/luckynight/test$

**Olivia_Zane** · April 13th, 2015

If the file contains a ID3v2 tag, Audacious will never write an APE tag. It will by default write an ID3v2.4

ID3 is not a stable standard; there are four different versions of it. Audacious uses the most recent version of the standard (ID3v2.4). If you want tags that can be read by older software, you will probably need to use a more advanced tag editor that allows you to choose what type of ID3 tag to write. I seem to remember EasyTag having an option for this.
I agree that this is a bad situation, and unfortunately it will continue to cause headaches until 1) people stop releasing backward-incompatible versions of the ID3 standard and 2) enough time passes that all software in use supports the current version of the standard.
For the time being, I recommend that you don't use Audacious for tag editing if you need compatibility with older software. There simply aren't enough developers working on Audacious to make it as flexible as something like EasyTag.

**Yellow Pasque** · April 13th, 2015

Yeah, audacious (3.7-development from git on Debian sid) chokes on it with the tag, apparently thinking it's an mp3 and trying to use mpg123 decoder:

Code:

INFO probe.cc:136 [file_find_decoder]: Matched MPG123 Plugin by content.

Without the tag, audacious uses the correct decoder:

Code:

INFO probe.cc:136 [file_find_decoder]: Matched FFmpeg Plugin by content.

As to Olivia_Zane's point, audacious still tries to use mp3 decoder even with an id3v2.4 tag.

**andrew.46** · April 13th, 2015

Thanks Temüjin. When I disable the mpg123 plugin (using Audacious 3.6.1) the file is played correctly and the tags are identified.

Code:

INFO probe.cc:104 [aud_file_find_decoder]: Trying FFmpeg Plugin.
INFO plugin-load.cc:55 [plugin_load]: Loading plugin: /usr/lib64/audacious/Input/ffaudio.so.
INFO probe.cc:104 [aud_file_find_decoder]: Trying FFmpeg Plugin.
INFO probe.cc:112 [aud_file_find_decoder]: Matched FFmpeg Plugin by content.
INFO probe.cc:112 [aud_file_find_decoder]: Matched FFmpeg Plugin by content.

So it is an audacious bug. Except that I am weary of irascible developers I would file a bug report with audacious...

**mc4man** · April 13th, 2015

Originally Posted by andrew.46

So it is an audacious bug. Except that I am weary of irascible developers I would file a bug report with audacious...

You needn't be worried about bug, either they'll fix or ignore (similar in a way to the mpc issue which I've 'fixed' in ffmpeg source as they've pretty much ignored

Or till then or in lieu of try this patch I just wrote, assumes file has a .tta ext., written for debian packaging.. ( .orig, ect.

Code:

--- audacious-plugins-3.6.orig/src/ffaudio/ffaudio-core.cc
+++ audacious-plugins-3.6/src/ffaudio/ffaudio-core.cc
@@ -615,6 +615,9 @@ const char * const FFaudio::exts[] = {
     /* Speex */
     "spx",
 
+    /* True Audio */
+    "tta",
+
     /* end of table */
     nullptr
 };

**andrew.46** · April 13th, 2015

Nice mc4man

. Looks like as well the plugin priority can be manipulated from $HOME/.config/audacious/plugin-registry but this is not as satisfying as patching...

**mc4man** · April 13th, 2015

Good to know about that config file, never really looked at..
For mpc sv8 I've altered ffmpeg, have had it removed for some time in a ppa shared ffmpeg, no complaints from the few using or myself.
(doesn't seem to make sense to define ext for mpc(sv7) but not mpc(sv8) & don't see the value to begin with, though there may have been..

Code:

--- a/libavformat/mpc.c
+++ b/libavformat/mpc.c
@@ -232,5 +232,4 @@
     .read_packet    = mpc_read_packet,
     .read_close     = mpc_read_close,
     .read_seek      = mpc_read_seek,
-    .extensions     = "mpc",
 };

**andrew.46** · April 14th, 2015

OK, one last time:

audacious will not play back tagged True Audio (TTA) files
http://redmine.audacious-media-player.org/issues/531

**andrew.46** · April 19th, 2015

Originally Posted by mc4man

You needn't be worried about bug, either they'll fix or ignore

All fixed now, and looks like the developer used the method you suggested:

https://github.com/audacious-media-p...09d709d1adb78e

I should have submitted your patch and given you some changelog glory

. This leaves the road clear to add True Audio support with ttaenc in abcde. I am still tossing up whether tagging should be with id3v2 or I should introduce mid3v2 from the mutagen package. Probably mid3v2 I suspect...