USB Stick Audio Source and Directory Mgt

[XBarbarian]

Greetings,

so, one of the +'s to having the NAV unit on my '12, is the USB port to use as a source for .mp3's

Thing is, when I browse the disc.. the "Folder List" seems fubar... I have my 23 GB's of music ordered like this \Artist\Albums\Songs

There seems to be no real logic to the way browsing the Folder list orders things, which makes it difficult to navigate to specific artisits, etc

Just bought a HP micro USB Stick ( thing is like a nub compared to the 32GB stick I use in my wife's MB C300, thus wont stick so far into the compartment and in the way )

I Love having my library on Solid State, no discs to scratch, change etc, although using compressed audio ( .mp3's ) does sacrifice some quality.. I do use a high bit rate on my rips though, that helps

Anyway, so, now I copied the MB USB stick to the new mini HP.. am wondering.. has any one found a way to organize to help it be easily navigated?

I am considering adding a numbering scheme to the Root ( Artist ) directory.. i.e \069 Radiohead\ In Rainbows\ Tracks .......... maybe that would force the unit to browse easier?

Also, is there anything like a 8.3 convention involved? A max number of directories or something? ( Like a FAT FS, or FAT32? )

Thanks for any info anyone can provide!

[RonRizz]

I have the same issue with my Stage 4. No apparent logic to the way they are listed.
I had 2 16mb thumbs, over 800 cds. Uploaded them into my new laptop, and they listed alphabetically. Loaded them onto a single 32MB thumb, and they still seem screwy. I'm certainly not computer savy by any means, but maybe if someone can answer, I can get one of my kids to translate!!! LOL

[XBarbarian]

/bump

no one has solved this situation?

[wilsonp]

Supposedly playback order is the order the files were written on the media, so perhaps copying one Artist at a time in desired order would work?

Try opening a cmd prompt and using the dir command to see the physical order?

[XBarbarian]

Originally Posted by wilsonp

Supposedly playback order is the order the files were written on the media, so perhaps copying one Artist at a time in desired order would work?

Try opening a cmd prompt and using the dir command to see the physical order?

Good Suggestion.. thanks.. will give that a try

[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]

[XBarbarian]

Thanks Brandon

good input. Ya.. my SLK 350 artist/album/track worked fine.. this '12 OEM Bose Nav unit doesn't.

Ill try your suggestion on a few albums.. see how that works...

[bdavis89]

I use an old iPod ftw

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

[buzzman3]

I have somewhat of a similar problem.

I've bought some MP3s onilne, but on my computer, they are stored as MP4s and NOT videos. Stored as songs.

I load them into my CP card and my stereo does not recognize them. =(

[XBarbarian]

so.. Im figuring it out. one negative.. the file system only recognizes 255 folders... I have tons more on my 32gb flash... going to have to go back through and get rid of stuff I hardly ever listen too...

[wilsonp]

Yeah, I use a small flash card because of the limits and just put my Christmas albums on it. I use an eBay'd classic iPod as my primary.

I also use JR and name everything artist/album/<track#> song name
I combine multi-CD albums into one long album.

Then I use iTunes to sync to the iPod with special computed playlists to pick up all the songs, skipping th Christmas music and manually excluding other tracks with a not 370Z playlist.