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Audio Tools Library (ATL) for .NET

Latest stable version :

Optimized with : ReSharper, BenchmarkDotNet and CodeTrack

Current status

What is ATL .NET ?

This library is aimed at giving .NET developers a managed, portable and easy-to-use library to read and write metadata from digital audio files and playlists with one single unified API, whatever the underlying format.

using ATL.AudioData;

// Initialize with a file path
Track theTrack = new Track(audioFilePath);

// Works the same way on any supported format (MP3, FLAC, WMA, SPC...)
System.Console.WriteLine("Title : " + theTrack.Title);
System.Console.WriteLine("Duration (ms) : " + theTrack.DurationMs);

theTrack.Composer = "Oscar Wilde (アイドル)"; // Support for "exotic" charsets
theTrack.AdditionalFields["customField"] = "fancyValue"; // Support for custom fields
theTrack.Save();

// Can alternatively be initialized with a Stream
theTrack = new Track(stream);

You'll find more working code on the Code snippets section of the Documentation, including what you need to manage embedded pictures (e.g. cover), chapters , lyrics and playlists

What is NOT ATL .NET ?

Audio Tools Library .NET is not

a standalone application : it is a library aimed at being used by developers to build software
an audio music player : it gives access to various properties and metadata (see below for the comprehensive list), but does not process audio data into an audible signal

Why open source ?

ATL has been open source since its creation. The original ATL 2.3 source written in Pascal language is still out there on Sourceforge !

By publicly sharing the result of their work, the MAC team has helped many developers to gain tremendous time in creating audio tools.

As a fellow audiophile and developer, I'm proudly extending and improving their initial contribution to the open source community.

Why would I want to use ATL while TagLib is out there ?

ATL has a full C# implementation and does not use any dependency, which makes portability trivial if your app is already based on .NET or Mono frameworks
ATL can auto-detect the format of the audio data you're using, even if the file extension has the wrong label or if you're feeding it raw data witout context
ATL features a flexible logging system which allows you to catch and record audio file reading/writing incidents into your app
ATL supports more audio formats than TagLib, including video game audio formats (SPC, PSF, VGM, GYM)
ATL supports chapters natively
ATL supports lyrics natively
ATL supports BEXT, LIST (general metadata, labels and notes), CUE (cue points), SMPL (sample loops), DISP (displayable objects), XMP, CART and iXML metadata chunks in RIFF / WAV files
ATL supports Playlists and Cuesheets
ATL supports async calls on writing operations

How to use it ? Which platforms and .NET/Mono versions does ATL run on ?

The ATL library runs on .NET Standard 2.1+ / .NET 6+

ATL unit tests run on .NET 6+

The library and its tests have been maintained on Visual Studio Express and Community (currently on Community 2022)

Please refer to the Code snippets section of the Documentation for quick usage

What kind of data can ATL actually read ? From which formats ?

SUPPORTED AUDIO FORMATS AND TAGGING STANDARDS

NB1 : Empty cells mean "not applicable for this audio format"

NB2 : All metadata is read according to Unicode/UTF-8 encoding when applicable, which means any "foreign" character (japanese, chinese, cyrillic...) will be recognized and displayed properly

R= Read / W= Write

Audio format	Extensions	ID3v1.0-1.1 support	ID3v2.2-2.4 support (1)	APEtag 1.0-2.0 support	Format-specific tagging support
Advanced Audio Coding, Apple Lossless (ALAC)	.AAC, .MP4, .M4A, .M4B	R/W	R/W	R/W	R/W
Apple Core Audio	.CAF				(5)
Audible	.AAX, .AA	R/W	R/W	R/W	R/W
Audio Interchange File Format	.AIF, .AIFF, .AIFC		R/W		R/W
Digital Theatre System	.DTS
Direct Stream Digital	.DSD, .DSF		R/W
Dolby Digital	.AC3			R/W
Extended Module	.XM				R/W (2)
Free Lossless Audio Codec	.FLAC		R/W		R/W
Genesis YM2612	.GYM				R/W
Impulse Tracker	.IT				R/W (2)
Matroska Audio, WebM Audio	.MKA, .WEBM				R/W
Musical Instruments Digital Interface	.MID, .MIDI				R/W (3)
Monkey's Audio	.APE	R/W	R/W	R/W
MPEG Audio Layer	.MP1, .MP2, .MP3	R/W	R/W	R/W
MusePack / MPEGplus	.MPC, .MP+	R/W	R/W	R/W
Noisetracker/Soundtracker/Protracker	.MOD				R/W (2)
OGG : Vorbis, Opus, Embedded FLAC, Speex	.OGG, .OGA, .OPUS, .SPX				R/W
OptimFROG	.OFR, .OFS	R/W	R/W	R/W
Portable Sound Format	.PSF, .PSF1, .PSF2, .MINIPSF, .MINIPSF1, .MINIPSF2, .SSF, .MINISSF, .DSF, .MINIDSF, .GSF, .MINIGSF, .QSF, .MINIQSF				R/W
ScreamTracker	.S3M				R/W (2)
SPC700 (Super Nintendo Sound files)	.SPC				R/W
Toms' losslesss Audio Kompressor	.TAK			R/W
True Audio	.TTA	R/W	R/W	R/W
TwinVQ	.VQF				R/W
PCM (uncompressed audio)	.WAV, .BWAV, .BWF	R/W	R/W		R/W (4)
Video Game Music (SEGA systems sound files)	.VGM, .VGZ				R/W
WavPack	.WV			R/W
Windows Media Audio/Advanced Systems Format	.WMA, .ASF				R/W

(1) : ATL reads ID3v2.2, ID3v2.3 and ID3v2.4 tags, but only writes ID3v2.3 tags and ID3v2.4 tags

(2) : all sample names appear on the track's Comment field. Track title only is editable

(3) : MIDI meta events appear on the track's Comment field

(4) : Support for LIST (general metadata, labels and notes), CUE (cue points), SMPL (sample loops), DISP (displayable objects), BEXT, CART, XMP and iXML metadata chunks

(5) : Reads audio properties only, due to the rarity of sample CAF files tagged with actual metadata

DETECTED FIELDS

Audio properties (from audio data)

Bitrate, Bit depth (bits per sample), Sample rate, Duration, VBR, Codec family, Channels count and arrangement

Standard metadata (from tags)

Titles : Track title, Album title, Original album title, Content group description
People & Organizations : Track artist, Album artist, Original artist, Composer, Conductor, Lyricist, Publisher, Involved people, Series title / Movement name
Count & Indexes : Track number, Total tracks, Disc number, Total discs, Album, Rating, Album sort order, Album artist sort order, Artist sort order, Title sort order, Series part / Movement index
Dates : Recording Year and Date, Original Release Year and Date, Publishing Date
Identifiers : ISRC, Catalog Number
Ripping & Encoding : Encoded By, Encoder
URLs : Audio Source URL
Style : Genre, Beats Per Minute (BPM)
Miscellaneous : Comment, Description, Long description (also known as "Podcast description"), Language, Copyright, Embedded pictures, Chapters, Unsynchronized and synchronized Lyrics using the LRC or ID3v2 format

Custom metadata

Any other field that might be in the tag is readable and editable by ATL. More information can be found on the dedicated page

NB : Most metadata will be read "as is", with minimal alteration. If your file has invalid tags (e.g. chapter start timecode located after file duration), ATL will give you back that information without trying to auto-correct it.

Industry standards

ATL supports the following industry standards :

Broadcast wave / BEXT (EBU – TECH 3285) for WAV files
Broadcast wave / CART (AES Standard AES46-2002) for WAV files
Broadcast wave / iXML for WAV files
XMP (ISO 16684–1) for MP4/M4A and WAV files

SUPPORTED PLAYLISTS FORMATS

Read and write : ASX, B4S, M3U, M3U8, PLS, SMIL (including WPL and ZPL), XSPF, DPL (PotPlayer playlist)
Read-only : FPL (Foobar2000 playlist)

See detailed compatibility table here

SUPPORTED CUESHEETS FORMATS

CUE

What is the roadmap of ATL.NET ?

Support for Broadcast wave metadata : aXML
Connectors to other library file formats (e.g. iTunes)

NB : Any user request that can be granted quickly will take priority over the roadmap

Does ATL.NET include code authored by other people ?

ATL.NET is based on :

Audio Tools Library 2.3 by Jurgen Faul, Mattias Dahlberg, Gambit, MaDah and Erik Stenborg (code ported from Pascal to C# and refactored)
MIDI class 1.5 by Valentin Schmidt & Michael Mlivoncic (code ported from PHP to C# and refactored)

Special thanks for their contributions to...

leglubert, tarrats, DividedSE, audiamus

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