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Topic: Songbird "changing" audio files!? (Read 4813 times) previous topic - next topic
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Songbird "changing" audio files!?

Hello, i am using songbird for mac to play my FLAC files and have been for some time, but i just realized that it may be altering my audio files without telling me. The reason i believe this is because after listening to an album in songbird, the folder that contained the album was 99.16% of the size that it was before. I only just noticed this last night :/

Will this "change" that songbird has done to my files result in any noticeable loss in audio quality? What is a good music player for Mac that can play FLAC that doesn't modify or change the audio files in any way?

Thank you!

Songbird "changing" audio files!?

Reply #1 –
Songbird probably just altered the metadata (tags) of some of the files for some reason, so the actual audio stream is most likely still intact. If you find that it really secretly alters your files, I'd strongly suggest to seek greener pastures, i.e. a less evil audio player, but I heard nothing of the sort about Songbird, yet. Still, I have made a habit of copying parts of my music library before testing new audio players, for this exact reason.

It's only audiophile if it's inconvenient.

Songbird "changing" audio files!?

Reply #2 –
i have reason to believe that this alteration came from one setting: "use audio normalization data if available", which was ticked at the time the change took place. I have since unticked it, and just listened to an ep that hadn't been listened to before in songbird and the files weren't altered at all..

would this setting be the reason the file sizes were changed?

Songbird "changing" audio files!?

Reply #3 –
Quote from: xdesirex22 on
i have reason to believe that this alteration came from one setting: "use audio normalization data if available"

I assume that this setting reads ReplayGain information from the files and uses it to normalize the files. I doubt this option will add or alter metadata. Are you absolutely sure you didn't alter any files in the folders, maybe deleted some album art or similar?
It's only audiophile if it's inconvenient.

Songbird "changing" audio files!?

Reply #4 –
Hardly. It should control whether or not to use embedded ReplayGain information.

A noticeable change in size would point towards album art being removed or somesuch. Did you notice something to that effect?

Songbird "changing" audio files!?

Reply #5 –
Quote from: stephan_g on
Hardly. It should control whether or not to use embedded ReplayGain information.

A noticeable change in size would point towards album art being removed or somesuch. Did you notice something to that effect?

no, there is no album art associated with the metadata of the album, so that couldn't be it. I am playing the album again to see if the size is altered at all......

I am thinking it could just be one stupid setting that im missing. are there any common settings that would result in a change like this?

Songbird "changing" audio files!?

Reply #6 –
Quote from: xdesirex22 on
i have reason to believe that this alteration came from one setting: "use audio normalization data if available", which was ticked at the time the change took place. I have since unticked it, and just listened to an ep that hadn't been listened to before in songbird and the files weren't altered at all..

would this setting be the reason the file sizes were changed?


I don't know Songbird, but might you have done ReplayGain processing? Some applications add a little bit of padding to accommodate tags changes (without having to rewrite the entire file). If Songbird does not, it might have even removed the padding.

But ... could there be a Mac equivalent to MS-Windows' Thumbs.db file? A hidden indexing file in the folder?

Songbird "changing" audio files!?

Reply #7 –
Well now that you mention it, i did edit the tag data of the songs, but there wasn't a decrease in size until after i had listened to the entire album.

Do you think the editing of the tags is what caused the decrease in file size?

Songbird "changing" audio files!?

Reply #8 –
Quote from: xdesirex22 on
What is a good music player for Mac that can play FLAC that doesn't modify or change the audio files in any way?

Give a look at Vox.
A fast and lightweight player a là Winamp (or XMMS ), no library management, tag editing etc... but some interesting DSP options like for example crossfeed (the only one I know on OSX).
... I live by long distance.

Songbird "changing" audio files!?

Reply #9 –
Quote from: xdesirex22 on
Well now that you mention it, i did edit the tag data of the songs

Well, that would be why the files no longer matched....... it wasn't Songbird changing the files, it was you!

Songbird "changing" audio files!?

Reply #10 –
so does changing the song name and whatnot ALWAYS change the file size?

Songbird "changing" audio files!?

Reply #11 –
It depends on whether the new metadata requires more space than the previous metadata was allotted or whether the software adds or removes padding beyond the change in space between previous and new metadata in the event that the new metadata would otherwise fit within the space that was allotted for the previous metadata.  If the new metadata can fit in the space allotted for the previous metadata there is no reason that the file size would have to change.

Let there be no mistake, altering the metadata alters the file but does not alter the audio data unless the program doing the writing is broken or you have a hardware problem like a bad stick of memory.  If the metadata exists at the beginning of the file (which is the case for flac) and altering it results in a change in file size, the entire file will be rewritten and as such is subject to corruption.  This might sound overly-paranoid, but I've suffered data loss due to defective memory in the past.

Songbird "changing" audio files!?

Reply #12 –
Quote from: greynol on
It depends on whether the new metadata requires more space than the previous metadata was allotted or whether the software adds or removes padding beyond the change in space between previous and new metadata in the event that the new metadata would otherwise fit within the space that was allotted for the previous metadata.  If the new metadata can fit in the space allotted for the previous metadata there is no reason that the file size would have to change.

Let there be no mistake, altering the metadata alters the file but does not alter the audio data unless the program doing the writing is broken or you have a hardware problem like a bad stick of memory.  If the metadata exists at the beginning of the file (which is the case for flac) and altering it results in a change in file size, the entire file will be rewritten and as such is subject to corruption.  This might sound overly-paranoid, but I've suffered data loss due to defective memory in the past.

i see. i don't believe that the files were corrupted since i listened to them and they still sounded the same. But whats weird is i actually made the names of all the files shorter. So according to what you said there shouldn't be a decrease in file size since the shorter names should be able to fit in the same space that was allotted for the previous longer names, right?

EDIT: one thing i left out is i also assigned a track number for each song (this is an album we're talking about). not sure if that affects anything or not

Songbird "changing" audio files!?

Reply #13 –
No. The file name isn't part of the file length, and isn't a metadata tag. Changing the file name doesn't change the length of the file at all. It's the tags that fit into the pre-assigned space in the file, and it's the tags that are being discussed here, not the file names.
 

Songbird "changing" audio files!?

Reply #14 –
sorry my fault, i meant metadata tag not file name >_<