I have brand new Sansa Clip which I’ve updated to the latest firmware yesterday.
I formatted it and set it to MSC mode. I am using Ubuntu Linux to transfer files using drag & drop.
My music collection is meticulously taggedusing EasyTag 2.1.5. I am using only Id3v2.4 tags.
Now for the problem:
When I transfer the music to the Clip, I see numbes instead of Genre names, e.g. all my “Ambient” music is shown under genre called “26”. The genres are displayed correctly in Audacious and other desktop players.
I think I know the reason: If I use a genre which is “standardized”, i.e. has its own number, it’s stored as string with numeric value. I.e. song with “Ambient” genre has TCON frame value of (string) “26”. According to ID3 specs, this number should be correctly interpreted as “Ambient” genre but isn’t in Clip. The specs (available at http://www.id3.org/id3v2.4.0-frames) state (emphasis mine):
TCON
The 'Content type', which ID3v1 was stored as a one byte numeric
value only, is now a string. **You may use one or several of the ID3v1
types as numerical strings** , or, since the category list would be
impossible to maintain with accurate and up to date categories,
define your own. Example: "21" $00 "Eurodisco" $00
If I use some made-up genre, for example “MyAmbient”, it shows correctly on the Clip, not surprisingly, because then it’s stored as a word, not as an number.
There are several workarounds available, e.g. writing my own script that corrects this, changing all genres to some made-up values (adding extra characters) but still, this seems to be a bug…
