I ripped some cd audio as mp3s using dbpoweramp with the default settings and it recognizes the album and names the songs accordingly as the songs are saved to the hard drive but however when played back on my kenwood car cd player (as mp3s), gibberish characters are displayed while the title and track names of mp3 songs downloaded from Amazon are displayed correctly. Any idea why or what I have to change in dbpoweramp to get the information to display correctly?

Make sure you are using ID3v2.3 or v2.2 and not ID3v2.4.

My gut tells me this is a Unicode problem.

From the audio properties of a file that won't read
ID3V2.3 (UTF16)

From one that will read
ID3V2.3 (ANSI) & ID3V1.1

What is a Unicode problem? What can I do?

dBpoweramp Configuration >> Codecs >> Advanced

disable the Unicode option for ID3 v2. You might find the Kenwood is not even able to read id3v2 and it is id3v1 which is needed, if that is the case switch on v2 and v1.

My Alpine is the same, it can't use UTF-8 or UFT-16 or ID3v2.4.

So we now do not just have software with broken ID3v2 implementation but also hardware with broken ID3v2 implementation.

Thanks. I changed the option from UTF to ANSI and that seems to have done the trick.

I wonder, do they make firmware updates for car receivers like they do other electronic devices?

By the way, a word of warning if your Kenwood happens to be one with a flip-down display aka MASK system, where you can flip the display thing around.

Those things are the worst invention ever. There is a little flat cable going from the display plate holder to the actual unit, and once you flipped it a few hundred times, that cable will actually start to break. First your display goes black intermittently, then permanently.

I know this cause i used to have a Kenwood several years ago, and the cable broke like that. What's worse, i recommended the same model to my friend, and his little cable also broke, making me look quite bad. Then when i did some research about it, it turned out that it's a very common problem with Kenwoods. I'd never buy one again, it happened like 2 years 1 month after i bought it, so no warranty. Almost like a planned failure.

Over the years, i found the good ones are Alpine, Pioneer and Clarion. However, they also have some where you can flip the display, which is to be avoided when a flat cable is involved. They WILL break someday.

The company that I work for makes products that contain flat cables that have to flex tens of thousands of times without failing. The difference is that instead of using copper as the conductor, you must use an alloy that can stand up to this kind of treatment, such as phosphor bronze.

So it's not that a flip-down display couldn't work reliably, but the manufacturer was too dumb or too cheap to do it right.

No, it's not that fancy, it's a Kenwood eXcelon KDC-X492 CD Receiver and has the regular flip down/removable faceplate. The controls are a little funky and you can't see the display in bright daylight but the performance is excellent. Very good sound and excellent radio reception. I got this model in particular because it had a USB port on the front of the deck itself so I just plug in my thumb drive.

Kenwood car CD decks with USB ports (can't speak for the other ones) support firmware updates via USB memory devices. I haven't updated my car CD deck as, when I purchased the unit, it came with the most recent firmware and Kenwood has yet to update it. The option is there to update it though. I guess I should have explained further that the best ID3 system that you can use is ID3v2.3 ANSI. ID3v2.4 support is still lacking across the board. My Kenwood car CD deck isn't compatible with it, iTunes compatibility is buggy, iPod compatibility is buggy, and I cannot get it up and running on my PS3. So stick with ID3v2.3 ANSI and you shouldn't have any issues.