"Use iTunes compatibility mode" setting

[jolinwarren]

Probably another elementary question, but I can't find the info on the forums. What exactly does the "Use iTunes compatibility mode" setting do? As in, what are all the differences in the resulting file with this setting enabled versus with it disabled?

[Mike1]

AFAIK, this about the ID3 Genre tag.

The latest standards [2.4 ?] allow an encoder to set this as a numeric value--though I don't believe they mandate that.

However, iTunes doesn't--or didn't--read the numbers. This means that if an encoder puts a numeric value in this field, iTunes will--or did--actually display a number rather than a genre name.

I'm havering on the tenses there, because I've actually seen this effect a few months back, but I don't currently encode into MP3 and haven't checked what iTunes 7.2 does.

If you are encoding into MP3 with LAME, you probably need to check that box.

[sbooth]

This setting has to do with two ID3v2 frames: TCMP and TCON. iTunes uses the presence of the TCMP frame (not the value it may have) to indicate whether a file is part of a compilation. TCMP is a nonstandard frame (not declared in the ID3v2.4.0 spec), so it is included in iTunes compatibility mode instead of generally . The TCON (genre) issues are exactly as Mike1 explained them.

I actually haven't checked if the latest iTunes still suffers from the TCON problems. It would be worth investigating, because this code is probably obsolete now.

[Mike1]

I actually haven't checked if the latest iTunes still suffers from the TCON problems. It would be worth investigating, because this code is probably obsolete now.

I just ripped a couple of test tracks and imported them in iTunes 7.2. Without the box checked, "Rock" displayed as "17"; "Classical", as "32".

[jolinwarren]

Thanks for the information -- both interesting and good to know for tweaking my settings.

Cheers,
Jolin