mp3 playback order in car stereo (USB stick) Options

[maggior]

I have a new car (Volvo XC70) which has the ability to play mp3 files stored on a USB memory stick. I copied a bunch of mp3 files to a USB stick and put it into the player. It worked well except for the fact that it played the tracks in a seemingly random order. The files and albums are organized like this:
artist\album\## TrackName.mp3

The files are LAME mp3 and are tagged with artist, genre, track number, track name, and year.

The album/artist/track name information all appeared correctly in the display, but the track order was totally wrong. Even listing the tracks in an album show them in the incorrect order. I did verify that "shuffle" is turned off. The tracks do maintain their grouping as an album, but are a random order within the album. Of course, the owner's manual is of no use.

Older posts here have talked about the play order being determined by when the file was created on the medium (CD-R at the time) rather than by the file name.

Does anybody know if this is the case? Any simple methods to resolve issues like this?

Thanks.

This post has been edited by maggior: Mar 22 2010, 20:17

[washu]

Older posts here have talked about the play order being determined by when the file was created on the medium (CD-R at the time) rather than by the file name.

Thanks.

My previous car (2007 Kia Specra) was like this with both USB and CD-R. Files would play in the physical order they were in the directory. It would not sort the files either by file name or by tags. "Albums" were by directories, not tags. It also could only read version 2.3 tags.

What I did was collect all the files in a directory on my PC first. Then I would format my USB stick and use robocopy to copy them all over, which would write them in alphabetical order. Whenever I changed what was on the USB stick I would format and re-copy everything.

The robocopy command I used was "robocopy /mir C:\pathtomusic U:\" Be careful with the destination drive/folder, it will erase anything there that isn't present in the source folder.

I would highly suggest you make only one level of folders such as "Artist - Album\## trackname.mp3". That way if your player is like my old one it won't try playing the "empty" artist folders.

My new car (2010 Hyundai Elantra) does sort the folders and files so order on disk is not important.

[Takla]

There is a utility called fatsort which will sort the files on FAT16 and FAT32 filesystems. For Windows you can use http://hem.passagen.se/chsw/fatsort/index.html and if you use OS X or BSD ot GNU/Linux or similar you can use the utility from http://fatsort.berlios.de/ In some distributions fatsort is in the repositories. I've used the fatsort utility in Debian to sort a couple of very basic generic mp3 players and it works fine. I didn't try the Windows version.

At the moment your player is playing the files in the order they were written to disk with no reference to any naming scheme. Either of these fatsort utilities will rewrite the directory structure so it works how you are used to and would usually expect.

[maggior]

Awesome!!! Thanks you guys. How I have some things to try out.

I like the idea of the fatsort utility because it is easier to use windows explorer to drag/drop the files to my USB stick. Using the robocopy command, I'd have to drag/drop the files to some sort of temporary holding area and then execute the robocopy command.

I'll report back with what I choose to go with.

Thanks again!

This post has been edited by maggior: Mar 22 2010, 21:08

[maggior]

I tried fatsort which seemed like it would be good, but it doesn't work on Vista. It didn't list any drives. I generally use Windows to manage my music, so I'm not really interested in a Linux utility.

In the end, robocopy did the trick for me. I found that I didn't have to format the drive and use the mirroring capability. If you just use it to copy files, it does so writing each file in alphabetical order. Perfect.

Now that I know what the issue is and I have an interim solution, I'm set.

Thanks guys!

[Aqua-Fusion]

Hi, I would like to ask you something:

I ordered a Volvo XC70, it will arrive in september 2010. But I'm wondering how the mp3 playing works. I drive now with a Volvo V50 and I must say, the way how you select mp3 files to play is awful.
Is it easy in the XC70? How is the navigation in the artist\album folders?
Is it easy to find and selected one track?

I'm a little worried. In my last car (Ford S-Max it was very good)
Did you solved your problem?


Thanks for the info,
Steven

This post has been edited by db1989: Feb 5 2012, 14:54

Reason for edit: deleting pointless full quote of first post

[probedb]

I have a Kenwood stereo which takes USB sticks and the filenames have to be 32 characters or less otherwise you get random sorting. I'm not saying this is the same issue but you never know

[maggior]

Hi, I would like to ask you something:

I ordered a Volvo XC70, it will arrive in september 2010. But I'm wondering how the mp3 playing works. I drive now with a Volvo V50 and I must say, the way how you select mp3 files to play is awful.
Is it easy in the XC70? How is the navigation in the artist\album folders?
Is it easy to find and selected one track?

I'm a little worried. In my last car (Ford S-Max it was very good)
Did you solved your problem?


Thanks for the info,
Steven

I solved the problem by using robocopy to copy the files on the USB drive. I was only playing around with it to see how it worked. It was OK, I remember not being overly impressed with the navigation. My wife uses her iPod in the car. The navigation of it is OK, but not great. What's annoying is that it doesn't remember where you were in the navigation like the iPod will. So, if you make a selection to play and want to go back to play something else from that artist, you have to start from the beginning.

BTW, we love our XC70, I hope you enjoy yours when you get it.

[mikasand]

The play order of the stored MP3 files in Volvo USB player are in the physical order the files were saved in the USB memory.
If for instance track #3 was added BEFORE track #2 in the USB memory, then track #3 will be played before track #2.
To organize files that are not played in the correct order; delete the files from the USM memory and then add them again in that order that they should be played.
Note: Neither track id nor file name has any impact of the play order.

[DonP]

I have a Kenwood stereo which takes USB sticks and the filenames have to be 32 characters or less otherwise you get random sorting. I'm not saying this is the same issue but you never know

That suggestion was in the first reply.

I would start by filing a warranty claim. That playback scheme is totally brain dead.

[kornchild2002]

I wouldn't say it is necessarily brain dead. The Kenwood deck I have goes by file name and I can easily export a playlist of 3000 songs so that the first song is 0001 Song Title, the second song will be 0002 Song Tile, and so on. It is a lot better than my Civic which plays songs either in some random order or somewhat in the order the tracks were burned to the data CD. I say somewhat because it will choose to play tracks randomly for no apparent reason. I had a Sony that was even pickier about playing mp3 and WMA files off of USB storage as it required that I put the files in a specific folder and then it seemed to just play them randomly.

The only implementation that I like has been from the Pioneer that is now in my Civic though it was expensive. It can work with playlists, I can plug my iPod touch right into it (via USB) and work with the playlists on it (or any other iPod that I have), I can pick and choose which artist/album/genre I want rather easily, and so on. It is a touch interface and the damned thing was almost as much as my iPod touch but it really is the only car deck I have come across that can actually do things right.

[probedb]

I have a Kenwood stereo which takes USB sticks and the filenames have to be 32 characters or less otherwise you get random sorting. I'm not saying this is the same issue but you never know

That suggestion was in the first reply.

I would start by filing a warranty claim. That playback scheme is totally brain dead.

You replied 6 months later to tell me that?

[Tom Brokaw]

Found this thread via google for a similar issue re: Pioneer DEH-2200UB. Posting for other googlers.

This appears to be getting more common, and a few generous souls have written some apps to take care of it.

I found a freeware called DriveSort to work the best for me. FATSORT wouldn't detect my USB drive in Win7 x64, and Fat Sorter was slower than I was willing to wait for.

[jp_over]

Older posts here have talked about the play order being determined by when the file was created on the medium (CD-R at the time) rather than by the file name.

My previous car (2007 Kia Specra) was like this with both USB and CD-R. [. . .] What I did was collect all the files in a directory on my PC first. Then I would format my USB stick and use robocopy to copy them all over, which would write them in alphabetical order. [. . .]

Robocopy is an excellent tool - thanks for posting this! I'll be testing out my newly robocopy'd USB this afternoon (Alpine CDA-117).

This post has been edited by db1989: Feb 5 2012, 14:57

Reason for edit: truncating full quote and moving from bottom to top

[jp_over]

Sadly, robocopy didn't do the trick (neither the/mir command or just robocopy) - the FAT application also would not recognize the drive. Not sure of other solutions here or perhaps something I missed in using robocopy (it did copy the files, just didn't put them in order). Perhaps a smaller file naming convention might help? I used album, artist, track, track title... player is an Alpine CDA 117.

This post has been edited by db1989: Feb 8 2012, 19:07

Reason for edit: removing botched attempt at an unnecessary bottom-quote

[jp_over]

OK, tried moving 1 file at a time to the USB drive - Alpine CDA 117 still did not play the files in the order I specified. Just about to give up on using the USB and expecting the files to play back in any specified (or even logical) order.

Of note, am using DB Poweramp to try to burn some CDs - will post back with the results from moving 1 file at a time to the "burn q"...

[JimH]

We've seen devices that need pre-pended track numbers, like this:

00Trackname.flac
01Trackname.flac
etc.

If that's it, some players can do this when they sync to the device.

[soulsearchingsun]

We've seen devices that need pre-pended track numbers, like this:

Huh? To me, it was clear that this thread is about devices that don't play in alphabetical order concerning folders and filenames. It shouldn't make any difference if I name my files a_first.ext, b_second.ext, c_third.ext etc vs. 01_first.ext 02_second.ext, 03_third.ext. Are you saying it does?

[goa pride]

DriveSort is unbeatable, it work on Windows 7 64bit
http://www.anerty.net/software/file/DriveSort/

[jp_over]

OK, tried moving 1 file at a time to the USB drive - Alpine CDA 117 still did not play the files in the order I specified. Just about to give up on using the USB and expecting the files to play back in any specified (or even logical) order.

Of note, am using DB Poweramp to try to burn some CDs - will post back with the results from moving 1 file at a time to the "burn q"...

DB Poweramp will burn CDs in correct order. Will attempt to use Drivesort and will post back. Perhaps this is an impossible problem set with the Alpine CDA 117.

[littlezack]

I had a need to copy data in alphabetical order (not for an MP3 play, but for my online backup server, description of my problem here).

Fatsort wouldn't work in my case because the USB was NTFS.

Instead I used RSYNC to copy the files. It's a Linux command or available via Cygwin on Windows. This will let you perform command line copies and does them in alphabetical order. There are alos plenty of Windows GUI wrapper for RSYNC that can make it easier if you don't know how to use the command line (try DeltaCopy).

Maybe it will help some of you with your MP3?

[libertyordeath17...]

another way to do this is to let Windows work for you. When copying and pasting tracks from your hard drive to your USB memory stick if you want to have a specific order , arrange the files you plan to copy in the order you want them to play in. Now drag and select them all.....""IMPORTANT STEP"" CLICK AND DRAG FROM FILE # 1 not just anywhere in the group of files. IT IS ESSENTIAL TO MOVE THIS GROUP OF FILES BY DRAGGING FROM FILE # 1 to the destination. This will start to copy all files to the chosen directory starting with the first file then the second and then the third essentially your copying them all at once but also ensuring that the order they get copied is in numerical order. Hope this helps.