Radio 10 & ID3 Tag display

[NCC1701]

I've made a half dozen coasters tonight playing with different settings, and haven't come up with anything that works yet.

I've got some old mp3 CDs, some 5 to 7 years old. When I play them, the ID3 info is displayed on Radio 10 ... Album Title, Artist and Song Title. But, on new CDs I'm burning I am seeing only 2 characters for each field. And, those characters seem to be irrelevant.
I've tried different file systems (UDF102, ISO9660, Joliet) bridged and not bridged. Closed the disks. Most of the settings play (a few don't) but none show the id3 info. And, yes, the id3 info is entered in the files.

I just examined one of the old CDs, and the only difference I see is that on it the mp3s are in a folder ... while the new disks have them at the root. But, the new ones play so I doubt that's the problem.

Any ideas?

[vwW12]

No idea.

I burn my discs directly from iTunes and they come out perfectly: song title, album title, artist.

[jwight]

From an older thread:

When you choose the text modes, you can choose to display either the file name, or use the ID3 tag. You can change the ID3 info in iTunes or Nero while burning the data CD.

Folder names are never displayed, just numbers.

Why not try burning the new discs with the folder format?

[NCC1701]

After doing some more investigating, I've come up empty handed ... except ...

It is specific mp3 files which don't display, and specific others which do display the information correctly. In experimenting, using WinAmp (the best PC mp3 player IMO) I removed all id3 info (totally cleared) then manually re-entered it. I've seen this solve problems in the past with Windows explorer not correctly displaying id3 info. Well, it didn't work with the radio. The non-displaying files still didn't display even after this effort. So, I still don't know what the problem is, nor how to resolve it. BUT! I think I have determined that the problem is with the files themselves and not with the radio.

I'm planning to fill six CDs with mp3s ... that amounts to roughly 36 hours non-stop, non-repeating music. I average less than an hour a day behind the wheel so that's a good month's worth. So, some of them don't give up their id3 info ... I'll get used to it.

[JPaul]

Originally Posted by NCC1701

[...]

I'm planning to fill six CDs with mp3s ... that amounts to roughly 36 hours non-stop, non-repeating music. I average less than an hour a day behind the wheel so that's a good month's worth. So, some of them don't give up their id3 info ... I'll get used to it.

Since I have similar plans (with iTunes though), I'll be following your project, so keep us posted if you please. Maybe burn just one first CD before you go the whole distance... just in case! Thanks.

[DowneasTTer]

Hi Victor,

Any luck with the id3 tags yet? I have burned a number of disks as well, using iTunes & Toast. Both work great but only the track number shows in the radio 10 display.

Thanks
Bruce

[NCC1701]

Hi,
No, I have yet to figure out what the problem is with the id3 tags. All of the files play just fine in the Radio 10. There are three fields for display: Album Title, Artist, and Song Title. Some files fail to display one, two, or all three fields. When the id3 info is in FACT blank, the radio displays <NO INFO>, but on these mystery files the field which doesn't display properly has a two character representation which seems to be irrelevant to the field's content. The two character code is preceeded by a blank space and may be TT, TB, TC, TP, TN, TH, TW, TA, TD, TM, T', TF, TJ, TV, TI, TS, TL, T1, TR, T8, TQ, TG, TE, or TK.

There does not seem to be any correlation between sampling rate and id3 display problems.

I have quantified the ratio of displayed vs not displayed as 65:76, or 46% properly displaying..

I've never used the software you're using. Mac or PC?
If PC, try WinAmp. You can manually enter the id3 info, or allow "auto tag" with your internet connection. Frequently the auto tag will enter the CD Title as some greatest hits or compilation though.
Winamp Media Player - MP3, Multimedia, and Music Player

It sounds from your description that your Radio 10 is not set up to display id3 info.
Do this: Press the <MENU> button/
Use arrows Right & Left of volume control to scroll through the menu items/
When you get to MP3TEXT, if it isn't set to ID3, use volume knob to
select ID3. The choices are ID3/OFF/FILENAME
Note: at least on my radio, using the volume knob to make selections for a menu item isn't a smooth operation. Seems like each click on the volume knob should change the value, but it doesn't. I have to kind of spin the volume knob until the desired selection finally shows its face. Hope this helps.

Maybe you'll solve the mystery?

[DowneasTTer]

Unbelievable, I'm a retired tech director for a school system. Have played with computers in schools since the 70's. Anyway reading your last post got me thinking. An earlier post had stated that they used iTunes and all was well. So the kiss principle should apply. I had used iTunes on my mac to burn several disks as well. Your comment about the radio 10 set up not being done... well I had done that as well. So when to check the radio.... what did I find but I must have not pressed the volume button to SET the preference to id3 tag. It was still set the default of off.

Thanks for the tip. All is well now. The display shows the correct song, artist and album.

Bruce

[NCC1701]

Originally Posted by DowneasTTer

Unbelievable, I'm a retired tech director for a school system. Have played with computers in schools since the 70's.
<SNIP>
Thanks for the tip. All is well now. The display shows the correct song, artist and album.

I'm impressed! I've only been playing with computers since the early 80's (unless you count a TI-58C programmable calculator with PC-100C thermal printer). I can recall when (in the 1970s) there was ONE computer on the campus of my community college. Room filling, card reading monster!

Glad all is well with your mp3 CDs. I was hoping someone may have a clue for me. At least all files play. I may just have to accept the imperfection in the id3 display.

Too bad Radio 10 doesn't feature a volume normalization or compression feature. I don't know if this is offered in ANY car stereo, but my notebook computer has orphan software from Volume Logic installed which does this perfectly! I sometimes use the auxillary input on the radio to play mp3s from my notebook. With two batteries I've got 5 hour's run time. Tried using my power inverter but got engine ignition noise through the system.

[brain mass]

As you said, the problem with your ID3 tags has nothing to do with sampling rates. The problem is with the ID3 text itself.

I've been trying to find which version of ID3 is supported by Radio 10, but the safest bet is to conform to the ID3v1 standard. The ID3 standard is documented at id3 (dot) org, or you could see Wikipedia instead.

For example, the ID3v1 standard says that an album name must be 30 characters or less. So when I created an MP3 CD with "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" on it, the ID3 tags for that album didn't show correctly because the album name is 37 characters long. But when I shortened it to "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts..." then Radio 10 correctly displayed the ID3 tags.

Another problem seems to be the characters in the text. For example, an MP3 CD with "Help!" as the album name didn't show correctly because of the exclamation point. But when I changed it to "Help" then Radio 10 correctly displayed the ID3 tags.