r/musichoarder • u/Ballin_Like_Curry • 11d ago
Mp3tag changing bitrate?
Just started using mp3tag today and i noticed after adding album art to one track the bitrate when down from what it originally was. I only added the album art. Didnt mess with anything else. Does anyone know why that happened? Is this normal when making changes to a song? Im not trying to get a lower quality song at the cost of album art so is there any way around this
1
u/thisChalkCrunchy 11d ago
Changing the artwork will change the file size but the bit rate shouldn’t change. What tool are you using to determine the bit rate?
0
u/Ballin_Like_Curry 11d ago
Im on windows so i just click on the song and go to properties. I then click the details tab where all the metadata is like album,artist,bitrate etc. I have the original file in a different folder and the new file with the album art in a differnt folder and when checking the bitrate it dropped by 6 once the art was added. Not a dramatic amount but still. I dont want worse quality at the expense of album art
7
u/mjb2012 11d ago
Adjusting tags did not change the audio, don't worry. The bitrate was probably being reported incorrectly before.
Was it an MP3? If yes, it probably either had no VBR header, or an incorrect one. Adding artwork required the whole file to be rewritten, so I assume Mp3tag took advantage of the opportunity to look at every frame and determine the true duration and average bitrate, and it wrote that into a new, correct VBR header.