"If the Title and Source entries combined are too long, the Year entry is shortened, so I get 20 or 200 instead of 2000 after syncronising (or even nothing!)"
I just ran into this problem last night. I tried re-ripping some Negativland albums. Some of the titles were huge... for example, "Negativland - Over The Edge Vol. 7 Part One:Time Zones Exchange Project 07. The Piddle Diddle Report: A Future Confronting the Past which is Our Future, Last Call from Howland Island, Eaten by a Black Hole, Returned to you Rightful Channel"
Ugh... I was experimenting with VBR and thought that was the problem. Then I was worried that the files themselves were too big. Some of these tracks were between 11 and 18 minutes. I greatly reduced the size of the track names and they finally appeared on the empeg, but with the odd truncated dates as you found. Good to hear it's not an isolated case and will be fixed.
Brian H. Johnson
MK2 36GB Blue
"Born to Lose..."
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Brian H. Johnson
MK2 36GB Blue, currently on life support
"RIP RCR..."