MP3s

[npaladin2000]

I tend to use MP3s on a USB stick, and I'm noticing the Mazda system doesn't seem to like a great many of them. Anyone had a chance to play around? I haven't found a pattern yet, but I suppose the system might not support greater than a certain bit-rate, which would be a terrible shame.

 

[Blackdog007]

Interesting, Is this happening on the infotainment unit or the standard stereo? I have a 64gig stick with over 700 albums and have not noticed it skipping tracks, yet. The problem I am having revolves around the standard stereo not playing tracks out of any given folder/album in chronological order. Of course file names are always preceded with two digit number, 01, 02....09, 10, 11 etc. I have even gone to dealership and tried the stick in another new 3 (again with the standard stereo) only to get the same results. Seems like a very simple firmware fix to me. Have you noticed that the tracks your system is skipping might be VBR mp3s? Just a thought.

 

[npaladin2000]

Infotainment unit. I have noticed that some systems will play MP3s in the order they appear on the file system, which is NOT necessarily alphabetical, but actually the order they're placed on the filesystem from first to last.

Does that system have the capability to play playlists? You could just put a playlist on there in the order you want and play it, if that's supported.

I did find out the solution to my issues, and will be posting a new thread and requesting a sticky for it. Too bad we don't have a separate audio section for the 2014s yet but we probably don't need it yet.

 

[Blackdog007]

10-4, will try a playlist but I have a feeling it may not work. This seems like a very limited media player. I think you may be right about it playing the files in the order they were written to the file system. I am wondering if this thing will recognize anything besides fat32. Or maybe I have to copy 7000 f'n files one at a time so it gets them in the right order, Ha! I'll get to that on the 32nd of this month. Perhaps somewhere on the interwebs someone has written a script that will do this very task for me???

 

[Blackdog007]

10-4, will try a playlist but I have a feeling it may not work. This seems like a very limited media player. I think you may be right about it playing the files in the order they were written to the file system. I am wondering if this thing will recognize anything besides fat32. Or maybe I have to copy 7000 f'n files one at a time so it gets them in the right order, Ha! I'll get to that on the 32nd of this month. Perhaps somewhere on the interwebs someone has written a script that will do this very task for me???

indeed you were correct, the files were not in the FAT directory alphabetically. I even realized that all the folders were not written in alphabetical order either. Luckily I found an awesome little piece of freeware for windows that will do all the reorganizing of the directory entries so that all files in any chosen directory are stored in alpha-order, including subdirectories. Super sweet fix, and relatively quick too because it doesn't actually re-write any of the files, just the directory entries... The program is FATsorter and you can find it here. http://fenux.net/story/fatsorteroneohfour
I was using a windows 7 machine and it worked fine, sais it will work with xp and .net framework. Thanks npaladin for the brainstorm that sent me in the right direction for this fix. I believe this will help many people that use USB sticks in multiple different MP3 players. It seems from what I found that a good number of players out there do not recache the drives file structure in alphabetical order.