RCD-510 not displaying some ID3 tags correctly

[AdamD]

Hi all,

I've recently bought an RCD-510 and had it installed in my '05 MkV Golf. The unit is a Bosch (taken from an Australian-delivered VW), with part number 5K0035190B, Hardware Index 005, Software Index 0236 and Software Version 12.11.

When playing mp3s via the SD Card, I'm seeing some unusual behaviour with the display of ID3 tags. All of my mp3s have full tags and cover art (and I've confirmed that all the tags are correctly encoded; we can rule out the files themselves being an issue), but depending on the file, the RCD will either display all tag fields fine (title, artist, album), omit one or more fields, or won't be able to display anything from the tag at all (and will just display the filename in such cases). The unit will always handle the same file consistently - it won't change how it displays a particular file's tag on subsequent loads/plays.

Another member of my family has a Delphi (Chinese?) RCD-510 in their MkV (part number 56D035190A, HW Index 001, SW Index 0003 and SW Version 20110708A), which reads all the tags 100% correctly every time - and seems to load the files (which are all encoded at 320kb/s, so not small files) a little faster as well.

Has anyone else experienced this sort of behaviour with their RCD-510 at all? I'm wondering whether it's related to the unit's firmware (in which case I should chase up with a dealer to get it updated), or else if the unit is in some way defective (unlikely, but hey).

I'll see if I can test out another Bosch unit with my SD card and determine if the problem is specific to my unit and/or firmware. But if anyone else can share their experiences I'd appreciate the feedback.

Thanks! (And a Merry Christmas if you're reading this on the 25th!)

AdamD

[kamold]

(and I've confirmed that all the tags are correctly encoded; we can rule out the files themselves being an issue)

I would say that is the most likely cause. ID3 has numerous 'overlapping' fields depending on the version of ID3 being used (v1 and v2 are completely different in their implementation, and in fact neither of them is an actual 'standard'). The fact that the same files show consistently would indicate that it is not an issue with the head unit per sae, rather a compatibility issue.

Try editing a 'problem' file in the music player of your choice (mine is Winamp because I'm old skool, but you might to use just a tagger like mp3tag) and check its ID3 fields against a 'good' file to see if there is a correlation.

You then might want to batch process your MP3s to copy the ID3 v1 tags to ID3v2 or vice versa.

There may be a firmware update for the RCD available which may improve the compatibility with various tags. These aren't available on CDs like for the RNS, I would suggest talking to Transporter who can probably check if there is an update for it.

[AdamD]

I would say that is the most likely cause. ID3 has numerous 'overlapping' fields depending on the version of ID3 being used (v1 and v2 are completely different in their implementation, and in fact neither of them is an actual 'standard').

Unfortunately it's not an issue with the underlying tag data. As mentioned above I've verified the display of the tags on another RCD-510 (a Delphi unit). The majority of the tags were written with Winamp or iTunes, but I've verified them all with a number of different tools on both Win32 and OS X platforms. All tags are version 2 (required for cover art); all are either v2.2 or v2.3. Almost all text is in the standard printable ASCII character set (32-126), although there are a handful of exceptions with Europe-specific characters, in the ISO 8859-1 (ISO Latin 1) set. Again, all are fine on the Delphi.

Try editing a 'problem' file in the music player of your choice (mine is Winamp because I'm old skool, but you might to use just a tagger like mp3tag) and check its ID3 fields against a 'good' file to see if there is a correlation.

I suspect the level of analysis required would be to check details like the size of the tags in bytes, the size and resolution of attached image(s), the number of attached images, and then try to draw some conclusions based on that. If all tags that cause issues simply didn't render at all then that would make more sense to me; the fact that some files contain one or two fields that do render and others that don't seems fairly odd - but then heavens knows about the idiosyncrasies of VW's ID3 parser implementation. My guess is the 'bug' is down to some files or tags exceeding some limit (perhaps a buffer size limit for a tag in the headunit); as all my mp3s contain coverart and many of those several large images, I might try stripping out the art from a few offending files as a first step.

At any rate, I'm surprised that others haven't noticed the same behaviour. Surely I'm not the only person who uses large 320kb/s mp3s heavy on cover art with a Bosch RCD-510?

There may be a firmware update for the RCD available which may improve the compatibility with various tags. These aren't available on CDs like for the RNS, I would suggest talking to Transporter who can probably check if there is an update for it.

I know that RCDs need to be updated by the OBD port; pity, as it was easy to update the RNS in my old GTI. Transporter installed the RCD for me; I'll check if he has the equipment to flash-update it. Thanks for the reply.

[AdamD]

No other bites on this one guys?