MyFord Touch, External drives, and Lossless Audio

[Harblar]

Ahhh... Makes sense. I've never had that turned on so no problems.

I can see how that would cause the problem, too, since it's basically overriding your tag data.

Glad you solved it!

 

[KaiserM715]

Great write up.

Then I stumbled across another file format I'd never used. Windows Media Audio (honestly... who owns a Zune). That's when the little light bulb went off. Microsoft SYNC... WMA... DUh!

Actually, I know some audiophiles that prefer the Zune due to the sound.

 

[602Raptor]

Harblar, Thank you for putting this together. I followed your instruction to the letter and am very impressed with the results. Now I just need to get a better USB drive.

 

[JackDiesel]

Lol. I used to have a Zune and as a digital player it was a whole lot better than it gets credit for.

Did you try converting your files into .flac? All my music is already in that format so that'd be nice if I didn't have to make any changes.

 

[Harblar]

Harblar, Thank you for putting this together. I followed your instruction to the letter and am very impressed with the results. Now I just need to get a better USB drive.

Your welcome! Glad it's working for you!

Lol. I used to have a Zune and as a digital player it was a whole lot better than it gets credit for.

Did you try converting your files into .flac? All my music is already in that format so that'd be nice if I didn't have to make any changes.

Never said the zune was a bad player, just that almost nobody had one. Hahaha

It's been awhile since I did my testing. Honestly can't remember if I tried Flac or not. Seems as though I did or specifically read somewhere else that Sync didn't support it. Give it try. Worst case scenario it gives you an unsupported format error message.

Lots of people are hesitant about converting their entire music collection, but with the amount of hard drive storage available these days it really isn't an issue. What I do is just make a clone of my music files: one directory for all my music in WMA and one directory for all of it in Apple. With dB power amp it takes just a matter of minutes to convert everything from one format to another and save them to a separate directory.

I've even taken it a step further and setup a watch folder program. When ever I connect the drive from my truck to my computer it automatically checks and syncs any new or altered files onto my trucks drive. Works pretty slick!

 

[JakeRoux]

Thanks for the write up. That's exactly what I've been trying to do using a 1TB hard drive connected to the USB port on my Expedition (just Sync equipped, not MFT). I've converted about 300GB of ALAC files (app 800 albums/12,000 tracks) to WMA-L using dBpoweramp. Problem is, Sync never seems to finish indexing them or returning an indexing error or prompt of any type. When I try retrieving by artist or album in USB mode, certain artists are either not there at all or not there in their entirety. I feel pretty confident the tags are all there and correct, as I even tried overwriting some of the problem albums/tracks with Mp3tag editor and that doesn't seem to help.

Any ideas? I've read on some forums that there may be a 15,000 item limit to the index, but not sure how accurate that is. For software that is in so many consumer hands, any type of technical documentation or support is sure hard to come by.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Harblar]

I've never experienced that personally. I've only got a little over 5000 tracks on mine. There could be a limit to the total number of tracks allowed (and really, based on the overall design if the media playback system, it wouldn't surprise me if there is). If that's the case, maybe MFT has a higher limit than the older sync versions.

If all the tags are ID3, those shouldn't be causing an issue, though check and make sure that both Artist and Album Artist are filled for all. Missing one or the other could cause an issue. Also make sure that none of the artist names are using special characters. I had to rename all my AC/DC songs, because they kept showing up as AC. Avoid / \ -, etc... () seem to work fine, though.

Only other thing I can suggest checking is the actual file name structure your using. Overly long, or complicated (lots of special characters) could be causing the problem. I keep all my files in a very basic file name structure: Artist - Album - Track Title.wma Never had an issue with files named like that.

Beyond that, I'm not sure what else to try. Make sure you got the latest sync version installed... Give it an hour or more to index. The initial index of my 5000 tracks took a good 15-20 minutes to complete and then another 5-10 minutes to build voice commands the first time. Only real way to know it's working is have it play all tracks. Every time you skip to the next track the total number of tracks should keep slowly increasing. 1/2000, 2/2025, 3/2132, etc...

Hope that helps.

 

[JakeRoux]

A belated follow up to my prior inquiry -

I have now switched vehicles from a '13 Explorer with Sync (ver 1, I believe, but no MFT) to a '14 Flex with Sync/MFT ver 2.0 I believe. My 1TB hard drive, which currently has approximately 13,000 WMA-L files, now indexes and plays flawlessly. Owners manual clearly states that this particular version of Sync/MFT (I know they are two separate systems, but honestly I'm not sure which controls what features and functions) has an indexing capacity of 30,000 files. So, all is good and I have room to add more.

And, it appears the prior issue I asked about was, in fact, related to the indexing limit with that version of Sync. For that vehicle, I was able to work around it by using only 32GB flash drives which contained approximate 1,000 WMA-L files. Perhaps that will help any others dealing with that issue for that version of Sync.

Thanks again.

 

[Cobra2Raptor]

This has been a helpful write up. Even with the Sony system, lossless audio is noticeably better; at least for me too. I have some much older MP3s that need to be re-ripped and standardized. All of them on one 64gb USB stick will at least give the audio system the best chance at sounding decent by feeding it a higher quality source.

Many thanks Harblar for your diligence.