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[mikolajek]

I've decided to "upgrade" some of my mp3 files and re-ripped them in higher quality than the original files in the library. I've removed the old ones and pasted the new ones and then I re-run the auto-import (with analyze audio option on).

The files got detected by the import feature as externally updated and re-imported, however they didn't get analyzed for audio properties. Instead MC seems to believe those files were already scanned and present them with the legacy audio data. I've re-run the audio analysis manually and the files got updated, but I'm a bit surprised why they haven't got automatically analyzed even though they were recognized as new.

Is this a bug or a feature? If the latter, is there a way to actually have the "replaced" files audio-analyzed during auto-import?

[RoderickGI]

Tell me, when you import the new files, do you get all the tags you had for the previous versions, even custom tags if you have any?

If so MC is finding the record of the previous files in its "Removed" database and is reusing the tags from those files, as it is supposed to. I would only expect MC to do that if the file name stayed the same though. i.e. The original files was a 128Kbps version of "I'm Happy.mp3" and you replaced it with the 320Kbps version of "I'm Happy.mp3". If you were ripping to FLAC so that the file name changed to "I'm Happy.flac" I would not expect MC to do that.

If the tags are being picked up from the Removed database for the new file version, then the file would already have values in the appropriate Audio Analysis tags. Hence MC wouldn't re-analyse them, as it thinks that has been done.

You could delete the records of the original files from the Removed database before importing the new ones, but then you would lose the benefit of picking up the existing tags. That may or may not be important to you. You can use a Smartlist to find the file in the Removed database.

You could also delete the contents of the Audio Analysis tags before deleting the original files, but that is as much work as any method.

I think I would just do what you have been doing, and use the Recently Imported Smartlist to find and analyse the new files.

[mikolajek]

Thank you for the answer, I believe it's clear for me now!

Indeed, all the tags magically got restored and I got confused where did the audio properties come from - now I understand they are saved to the library in parallel. And indeed what I was was replacing my files ripped years ago in 192 kbps quality with the files with the same names / tags but ripped in 320 kbps quality. Nothing else has changed.

Is there a way to get rid of the files' traces? I mean I have some files that were removed from my collection months ago and I still see their names in the import report as skipped due to an earlier removal. It's not an issue, but it may be confusing. I guess I can apply the same action to the replaced files - delete their traces and make MC believe those are completely new files, can't I?

[RoderickGI]

Is there a way to get rid of the files' traces? I mean I have some files that were removed from my collection months ago and I still see their names in the import report as skipped due to an earlier removal. It's not an issue, but it may be confusing.

If the files are still coming up when you run Import then they must still be on your hard drive and in a directory that is included in the Auto Import settings. You could either delete those files completely if you don't want to keep them, or you could move them to a location that isn't included in Auto Import.

I guess I can apply the same action to the replaced files - delete their traces and make MC believe those are completely new files, can't I?

Yes, you could also delete the record of the files in the Removed Database, and then Auto Import would pick them up again and put them back into your MC Library. They would be treated like new files.