2.01.32 firmware: FLAC metadata extraction bug: padding is REQUIRED

Get this archive

http://trance.nney.com/sansa_content.zip

Unpack it.

Remove all files from the Clip’s MUSIC folder.

3. 

Put content of the ‘working’ folder in the Clip’s MUSIC folder.

It works.

‘The Ministry of S…’ Album shows up in the Albums section.

As expected.

(you won’t be able to hear the music though as, to make the zip small, i replaced all the tracks with a 440hz tone) 

Remove all files from the Clip’s MUSIC folder.

The put content of the ‘broken’ folder in the Clip’s MUSIC folder.

It does not work.

I expect the same behaviour as above but instead

the Album appears in the Unknown section!!

Both versions share the same exact metadata namely:

TRACKNUMBER=01
ARTIST=Jakatta
TITLE=American Dream (A…
ALBUM=The Ministry of S…
DATE=2001
TRACKNUMBER=02
ARTIST=Bent
TITLE=Private Road
ALBUM=The Ministry of S…
DATE=2001
TRACKNUMBER=03
ARTIST=Schiller
TITLE=Das Glockenspiel …
ALBUM=The Ministry of S…
DATE=2001
TRACKNUMBER=04
ARTIST=System F
TITLE=Insolation
ALBUM=The Ministry of S…
DATE=2001
TRACKNUMBER=05
ARTIST=G Club presents B…
TITLE=Guitarra G (Origi…
ALBUM=The Ministry of S…
DATE=2001
TRACKNUMBER=06
ARTIST=Breezin
TITLE=Clouds
ALBUM=The Ministry of S…
DATE=2001

The ‘broken’ one is identitical to the ‘working’ one except it has the padding blocks stripped out.

I did this using the Linux command:

metaflac --remove --block-type=PADDING --dont-use-padding *.flac

Padding is only padding - why does it make such a big difference??

Adding even one byte of padding

[metaflac --add-padding 1 *.flac]

works around this issue.

But why should I need to?

David 

p.s. I also notice the 440hz tone isn’t audioable on the Sansa either though I hear it fine when I play these tracks on my PC.

Can you tell me what application are you using? Also, the contents you posted, I downloaded them and then transfer to the Clip and could not play them either regardless of the working or broken folder.

Why strip out the padding?  Is it causing some other problem?

> Can you tell me what application are you using?

It’s in my original posting. The application I’m using is the Linux command line program ‘metaflac’.

You can read about it here http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/man/man1/metaflac.1.html

> Also, the contents you posted, I downloaded them and then transfer to the Clip and could not play them either regardless of the working or broken folder.

It’s in my original posting where I write “you won’t be able to hear the music though as, to make the zip small, i replaced all the tracks with a 440hz tone)” 

> Why strip out the padding?  Is it causing some other problem? 

Well it’s big. 8K per track by default. That could be 100K per album. Also why NOT strip out the padding? Doing so should NOT break metadata extraction and doesn’t break it on any other player.

I’ve been in touch with Sansa developers and they say

Hi David

Yes. This is a valid issue. Engineering team verified and stated it would be fixed in the next firmware release. There is no date yet set for that.

Greig Peters
Sr. Tech Support Engineer
SanDisk Corporation

 

which sounds good.

@davidha wrote:

> Why strip out the padding?  Is it causing some other problem? 

Well it’s big. 8K per track by default. That could be 100K per album. Also why NOT strip out the padding? Doing so should NOT break metadata extraction and doesn’t break it on any other player.

Well, you said it worked with 1 byte of padding, so why not go with that?  Surely if you’re taking the trouble to strip it out, it can’t be that much more to add 1 byte.

@davidha wrote:

I’ve been in touch with Sansa developers and they say

Hi David

Yes. This is a valid issue. Engineering team verified and stated it would be fixed in the next firmware release. There is no date yet set for that.

Greig Peters
Sr. Tech Support Engineer
SanDisk Corporation

 which sounds good.

Nice to see that SanDisk is still listening to customers.