Missing dates in ID3 tags

[grommal]

I have a Sony NWZ-S616 DAP. None of the year info in my ID3 tags shows up on the player. The 4 mp3 files that came with the player have years that show up just fine.

My songs were all ripped with EAC and encoded with the latest Lame. Album art was added and/or small corrections were made to the tag info for many files using Media Monkey, but even the files not edited fail to show the year on the player. All the years on all tracks show fine in Media Monkey or WMP.

I poked at the tags with Mp3tag, and they all show that both the v1 and v2 tags are stored, on all my tracks as well as the Sony demo tracks. I tried re-saving the tracks with just the v2 tags, and also changing from unicode to ASCII, but it made no difference.

Any ideas?

 

[tman1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by grommal /img/forum/go_quote.gif I have a Sony NWZ-S616 DAP. None of the year info in my ID3 tags shows up on the player. The 4 mp3 files that came with the player have years that show up just fine. My songs were all ripped with EAC and encoded with the latest Lame. Album art was added and/or small corrections were made to the tag info for many files using Media Monkey, but even the files not edited fail to show the year on the player. All the years on all tracks show fine in Media Monkey or WMP. I poked at the tags with Mp3tag, and they all show that both the v1 and v2 tags are stored, on all my tracks as well as the Sony demo tracks. I tried re-saving the tracks with just the v2 tags, and also changing from unicode to ASCII, but it made no difference. Any ideas?

Are you using drag and drop or WMP11? Can you see album art? I use WMP to transfer to my A-818 and the years transfer to the player. I know that there are reports that the album art may not transfer using drag and drop, although supposedly if it is embedded in the tag it transfers, so not sure why it wouldn't work with the year.

BTW, this just reminded me - I like the play by year feature in theory, but with all the remasters coming out, many tag years are later than when the album first came out, which screws up the whole point of play-by-year, unfortunately.

 

[grommal]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tman1 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Are you using drag and drop or WMP11? Can you see album art? I use WMP to transfer to my A-818 and the years transfer to the player. I know that there are reports that the album art may not transfer using drag and drop, although supposedly if it is embedded in the tag it transfers, so not sure why it wouldn't work with the year. BTW, this just reminded me - I like the play by year feature in theory, but with all the remasters coming out, many tag years are later than when the album first came out, which screws up the whole point of play-by-year, unfortunately.

I'm using drag/drop, as opposed to WMP11. I really don't want to get into synchronization of libraries. I'm embedding album art in the tags in order to get that transferred, and it works fine. Everything else in the tag that has a corresponding display field on the player is showing up just fine. Only the year is missing. It says "unknown" on the player, but those years are clearly in each tag. Multiple pieces of software show it. Even Windows shows the years if I examine individual file properties. I've now tried v1 and v2 tags and neither of them work.

I suppose it's just a small irritation, but I'd like to use the play by year feature every once in a while, too. And besides that, it bugs me to see that "unknown" staring me in the face on the Now Playing screen, given that I'm so anal about having all the info in the tags to begin with.

 

[grommal]

Well, I just sent Sony a note about the problem. I guess it's time to test their support system.

 

[grommal]

Sony's first try at fixing the issue was to send me a Knowledge Base article (who do they think they are, Microsoft?) on how to view and edit ID3 tags in Sonic Stage. Naturally my next step was to point out that THIS PLAYER DOES NOT USE SONIC STAGE, AND THE PROBLEM IS MISSING TAG INFO ON THE PLAYER, NOT IN SOME PC SOFTWARE.

Strike one for Sony support. Let's see what the do with the second pitch.

 

[grommal]

Swing and a miss! Strike two!

Unbelievably, Sony sent me another note with suggestions on how to view my tag info in Sonic Stage. And this was after I told them very clearly that I'm not using Sonic Stage!

At this point, I'm hoping I never have a actually serious problem with the player. Their support has been less than worthless so far.

 

[grommal]

Now I figured out a fix, but I don't like it much. I decided to try transferring files using WMP, though it's not my preference. If I use Windows to examine the file Properties on the player itself, files transferred using WMP retain the date info, but those transferred by drag and drop do not. What's equally strange is that bitrate info is retained in the Properties dialog for the drag/dropped files, but is lost (shows 0) with the WMP transfers.

Very strange.