UTF-8 support in M3U Playlists?

[mckdg]

I've used EasyTag on my Linux machine to generate a number of M3U playlists. Most work fine in Sonos, but those which reference filenames or directories containing extended UTF-8 characters (é, ü, ß, etc) do not.

These playlists work fine anywhere else I've tried (Banshee Music Player, UPnPlay Android app), and also the directories and filenames are accessible when accessed by other routes in the Sonos controller software itself. The Sonos software also has no trouble with UTF-8 in MP3 tags.

Would it be possible for UTF-8 support to be added?

[mckdg]

I've also found that UTF-8 isn't supported in PLS playlists either. How do the folks on the German/French sections of this forum get on? Is there a language-specific tweak that handles the extended characters?

[montag]

I have the same problem as the OP; Sonos doesn't understand references to files with paths containing extended characters.

Do M3U files have to be encoded in a certain way to work with Sonos?

[beynym]

Originally Posted by montag

I have the same problem as the OP; Sonos doesn't understand references to files with paths containing extended characters.

I beg to disagree. In my case: all music for example from the French artist Gérard Manset is being displayed in Sonos as it should be; with à, ë, é and so on. The files Sonos uses for indexing are stored in folders with the original album names, for example \My BookWorld\Gérard Manset\Rien à Raconter\La liberté.mp3

Originally Posted by montag

Do M3U files have to be encoded in a certain way to work with Sonos?

It may very well be a language setting problem on your computer.

[Andy4834]

Hi
I also can access files with accented European characters with English language as the default. However, I note that the OP mentions playlists which may be the issue - files can be accessed directly but not through playlists. So either the file name is not encoded correctly in the playlist or Sonos has problems with accented characters in file names taken from playlists.
Andy

[montag]

Originally Posted by beynym

It may very well be a language setting problem on your computer.

Of course, and it may be that my M3U files are incorrectly encoded. I would like to find out what's wrong so I can correct it, hence my question. FWIW other applications can play the files without any problems.

And if it wasn't clear it's just playlists that aren't working. Sonos has no problem at all with files that are indexed directly.

[beynym]

Originally Posted by montag

Of course, and it may be that my M3U files are incorrectly encoded. I would like to find out what's wrong so I can correct it, hence my question. FWIW other applications can play the files without any problems.

And if it wasn't clear it's just playlists that aren't working. Sonos has no problem at all with files that are indexed directly.

Maybe this will help: 'm3u files properly use the Latin-1 charset. The Unicode version of "m3u" is "m3u8", which uses UTF-8 Unicode characters.'

[montag]

Originally Posted by beynym

Maybe this will help: 'm3u files properly use the Latin-1 charset. The Unicode version of "m3u" is "m3u8", which uses UTF-8 Unicode characters.'

Yeah, I tried that. Sonos didn't pick up the m3u8 files at all.

[beynym]

Originally Posted by montag

Yeah, I tried that. Sonos didn't pick up the m3u8 files at all.

You could consider using MP3Tag. It creates playlists with á, ü, ê etc that Sonos displays correctly - I just tried.

[montag]

Originally Posted by beynym

You could consider using MP3Tag. It creates playlists with á, ü, ê etc that Sonos displays correctly - I just tried.

Thanks for the tip, alas I'm on OS X, not Windows (the playlists are generated by a custom Python script).

Anyway, I never got Sonos to read my M3U files properly. Instead I now create the playlists in the WPL (Windows Media Player Playlist) format. This works great and all extended characters are recognized correctly.