Know when audio files can be written
Audience: Users who want to avoid accidental edits to source files. Goal: Separate read-only workflows from explicit file-writing workflows. Type: guide
Most app workflows are read-only with respect to source audio. The source file exceptions are intentional and narrow.
Read-only for audio files
These workflows do not edit audio files:
- scan,
- Refresh Tags,
- SONARA, MAEST, MERT, MuQ, and CLAP analysis,
- MERT, SONARA, CLAP, SET, and Hybrid search,
- browser preview,
- analysis reset,
- classifier scoring,
- database clear,
- relocation preview,
- relocation apply,
- export to M3U or CSV.
They may still write SQLite rows, logs, reports, temporary preview WAV files, generated sidecars, or export files.
MAEST genre tag apply
The genre save button starts a genre tag job for all tracks with stored MAEST genres. The API rejects per-track genre writes. Current behavior is all available MAEST genre rows.
The job writes only the standard genre field:
| Format | Tag field |
|---|---|
| MP3 | ID3 TCON |
| WAV/WAVE | Mutagen WAVE/ID3 genre handling, read back as TCON |
| AIFF | ID3 genre handling |
| FLAC | GENRE |
| M4A/MP4/ALAC | ©gen |
It preserves normal tags such as title, artist, album, BPM, key, and other fields. After a successful write, the app refreshes the scanned metadata for that track in SQLite.
Failed writes are recorded per track and the batch continues.
Audio Doctor apply
Audio Doctor is dry-run-first. Apply mode requires exact APPLY REPAIR and prior state, then repairs only files reported as repairable. Apply runs sequentially and creates backups by default in the standalone tool.
Audio Dedup apply
Audio Dedup reports duplicate candidates by default. Apply mode requires exact APPLY DELETE. It then deletes only safe duplicate candidates inside the selected root and removes SQLite rows only for tracks whose files were deleted.
Relocation apply
Relocation apply updates stored SQLite paths only. It rejects conflicts and missing target files before applying. It does not move, copy, delete, or retag audio files.