Empty Title / Artist fields cause Pixelout to display foreign characters

If the Title and/or Artist fields are left blank for the Audio metadata, Pixelout player should display these as blank, instead Pixelout is displaying a small set of foreign characters, seemingly randomized (see attached image for example).

It seems the NULL / NaN values are somehow being botched in the player's display conditions. But I really can't tell which component is at fault (Audio, getID3, or pixelout). I wasn't able to find any reports of this anywhere on those other component dev sites.

- I am using Audio 5.x-1.4 (though I first noticed it on 5.x-1.2, then I upgraded but the problem persists).
- I also upgraded getID3 to 1.7.9 and still seeing the problem.

I have a workaround by adding a space character " ", but this is not really a long term solution.

Will this patch work: http://drupal.org/node/621456 ??