USB Stick Audio Source and Directory Mgt

BrandonT

This issue has bugged me since I got my first USB capable radio a couple years ago. Different brands seem to display a little differently, so you really have to find out the logic on yours and work with that. I fussed with this a lot trying multiple folders, long file names, etc. to get them to play correctly, a big problem being when I had more than one album for an artist. Using Artist/Album/song didn't work well, nor did incorporating that naming convention into the filename work well either.

What I ended up doing that seems to work reasonably well across several radios is:
1) use folders in Artist/Song format
2) Name the song file in the format [track#][name].mp3, like "01 In the Flesh.mp3". This kept the songs playing order correct. When just using the song name it played alphabetically
3) for multiple albums I tried a number of things but in the end what worked was to number the tracks in one sequence across albums. So in the Pink Floyd folder I might have songs with track number 1-56s to include 4 different albums. Then rename the file names to incorporate this new track number.

If not for J River Media Center this would have been a huge pain. But with JR it is just a couple clicks to change a bunch of albums' track numbers in one sequence, then another couple clicks to rename all the individual file names to incorporate that track number into the file name.

Like this:

E:/Pink Floyd/01 In the Flesh.mp3 (first track on The Wall album)
....
....
45 Eclipse.mp3 (last track on DSOTM album)

[Edit: that last isn't displaying like I'm actually typing it, but you get the idea]