I have a Clarion 745 head unit that plays mp3 and wma. I have been using MusicMatch to rip my music, and have had some interesting results.

The first problem is the id3 tag information is not coming through on all tracks for the mp3s. They were all ripped in the same way, 100% VBR. Sometimes the tag info is there, and sometimes it says "NO-TAG". I can always get the folder and filename, at least. If I rip wmas, the tag info is always there.

My other problem is that no matter what software I use, the playlists are never usable. The head unit says it will supoprt m3u playlists, but if I get the disc created with one or two lists on it, I can select them with the head unit, but can only read through a few of the tracks. The manual says I can have playlists up to 255 in length. I have tried many sizes from 10 to 100 tracks, and they never work right.

Anyone have any experience with Clarion heads and know a good way to get this to work well?

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Celeritas
The first problem is the id3 tag information is not coming through on all tracks for the mp3s.

 

Check the length and content of the tags that won't display. Some decks have limited tag length or special characters that will keep them from displaying the tags.

 

there's anice program called tag & rename, really good and i've managed to tag all of my 60GB of mp3's

cheers

migzy

 

I removed all the tag information and re-tagged the files using Musicmatch and now they show up. I don't know why they weren't showing before, but now every one of them is fine. I'll have to check if I have to do this every time I rip files, as I only checked out ones that I already had in my library. I think it may have something to do with the fact that Musicmatch uses both ID3 version 1 and version 2 tags, defaulting to version 2. I don't think that most head units are compatible with the version 2 tags, and the version 1 tags might not have been getting updated properly.

 

Most now read ID3v2. I would actually suggest ripping a disc with only v2 tags and checking if your head unit reads them. v1 tags are really only useful for confusing most players now.

 

Yeah, I just checked the manual and you are right. It reads V2. The only thing I can think of that caused them to not work before is that I had the same discs ripped as wma before switching to mp3, so maybe the tags weren't populated right when I deleted the old and ripped the new.