Yet another audio thread

[MC B2K]

I searched, but didn't find anything definitive, so I thought I'd share my audio adventures.

I went with 32GB Sandisk Cruzer. The very first thing I did was do a low level format (make sure the "Quick Format" is unchecked) and set the allocation size to 32kb and filesystem to FAT32. This may leave some empty space, as the files will be written in 32kb blocks, but it makes a drive perform faster. There are numerous articles on the why's, so I won't get into it here.

For those that may be having problems with your usb thumb drives, a low level format may help... some thumb drives come with preloaded "boot strap" programs and they will not work right.

The next thing I did was make a "root" directory on my computer and copied all my music to it. I had various places it was stored like itunes and some stuff I had downloaded... I ended up with a mix of .mp3 and .m4a files... but both played (I tested before I got to carried away).

The next thing I did was clean up my naming and make sure the songs were in the albums, and the albums were under the artist. All of my music is now in a folder structure like this:

Music -
--Artist 1
----Album 1
------ 01 Song 1.mp3
------ 02 Song 1.mp3
----Album 2
------ 01 Song 1.mp3
------ 02 Song 1.mp3
--Artist 2
etc...

I then used TagTuner and Mediamonkey to normalize my tagging, and add album artwork... time consuming and tedious, but I wanted each song to have the correct artwork... I found iTunes to be hit and miss. grrr.

I then copied all of this to my 32GB drive. Much to my amazement, the albums (if you said for instance, "Play Album Back in Black") did not play in the right order... apparently the MFT system does things in alphabetical order... another grrr. After scouring the interwebs, I tried several things, all of which didn't work.

Frustrated I called Ford Sync Support and they confirmed what I knew... that the MFT doesn't recognize track numbers. GRRR! They informed me that if I wanted to play an album, in track order, I'd need a playlist. Now for the fun part...

I now have learned more about .m3u than I'd ever want to.

Let me quickly explain the .m3u format, or better yet show you an example:

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:312,AC-DC - Hells Bells
..\ACDC\Back in Black\001 - Hells Bells.mp3
#EXTINF:318,AC-DC - Shoot To Thrill
..\ACDC\Back in Black\002 - Shoot To Thrill.mp3
#EXTINF:215,AC-DC - What Do You Do For Money Honey
..\ACDC\Back in Black\003 - What Do You Do For Money Honey.mp3
#EXTINF:212,AC-DC - Giving The Dog A Bone
..\ACDC\Back in Black\004 - Giving The Dog A Bone.mp3
#EXTINF:255,AC-DC - Let Me Put My Love Into You
..\ACDC\Back in Black\005 - Let Me Put My Love Into You.mp3
#EXTINF:256,AC-DC - Back In Black
..\ACDC\Back in Black\006 - Back In Black.mp3
#EXTINF:210,AC-DC - You Shook Me All Night Long
..\ACDC\Back in Black\007 - You Shook Me All Night Long.mp3
#EXTINF:239,AC-DC - Have A Drink On Me
..\ACDC\Back in Black\008 - Have A Drink On Me.mp3
#EXTINF:246,AC-DC - Shake A Leg
..\ACDC\Back in Black\009 - Shake A Leg.mp3
#EXTINF:255,AC-DC - Rock And Roll Ain't Noise Pollution
..\ACDC\Back in Black\010 - Rock And Roll Ain't Noise Pollution.mp3

That is a valid .m3u that works in my folder structure I described above.

The first line identifies this file as an extended M3U playlist.
The second line describes track information, this is the data that shows up in the display when you play the song. The number is the length of the track in seconds.
The third line is the relative path to the actual audio file. This LINE IS KEY, as if it's wrong, MFT will show the playlist, but it will be empty.
Repeat the second and third lines for each track.

I made a folder (this isn't the only way to do it) called Playlists, in the root of my usb drive.

ACDC
--Back in Black
---- 001 - Hells Bells.mp3
---- 002 - Shoot to Thrill.mp3
...
--Album 2
---- 01 Song 1.mp3
---- 02 Song 1.mp3
...
Artist 2
--Album 1
---- 01 Song 1.m4a
---- 02 Song 1.m4a
...
Playlists
etc...

In there I put all my playlists, in the format I described above. The tricky part was getting the playlists formatted correctly so once things were on the USB drive they would work... I had no luck with off the shelf programs and found the process very tedious.

So... I wrote a Perl Program (its a scripting language) that I can run against my USB drive and it builds a library of valid .m3u playlists, one for each album and writes it into my playlists folder. It works on both mp3 and m4a files (In fact I have a couple albums with mixed formats) correctly.

It takes about 2 minutes to build 400 playlists for 400 albums (I'm using about 28GB of the 32GB drive) and everything is matched up perfectly.

I'd be happy to share the Perl script if any techies want to give this a go...

I'm sure there are others that will find this useful. I also found out Ford is aware of the shortcomings and a better MFT audio solution is being worked on... Hopefully it will be able to play albums in track order.

 

[Harblar]

The Key to Sync/MFT voice control is proper ID3 tags and it makes it much more simple than what you're doing.

First off, you don't need anything more than a root folder. All of my music is stored in the root directory of my external drive. To keep things somewhat organized I save all my music in the following naming structure:
Artist - Album - Track Title.mp3 (m4a, wma, etc)

I tend to do a lot of my music in wma simply because this is a Microsoft based system and, surprise surprise, wma seems to be the most compatible (at least in terms of lossless audio/ bit perfect cd rips... the DVD audio rip of Metallica's Black Album sounds freakin amazing, at least as good as it can on a stock system. haha)

Anyway... As long as all the information in your ID3 tags is up to date and accurate (artist, album, track number, track title, genre, artwork, etc...) there should be no need for a playlists at all, unless you want to make a custom mix like on your ipod.
*note. For double disc collections I combine them into a single disc structure. Ex... If disc 1 of 2 ends on track 10 I simply continue disc 2's track numbers as 11, 12, 13, etc... and change everything to show as a single disc album. Makes things easier, for me at least.

Doing things this way, I have had zero problems. If I tell sync, "Play Album Master of Puppets" I hear Battery and everything else in correct track number order (providing I have shuffle turned off). Play Track, Play Artist, etc... all work perfectly. The only thing I notice is that when you play track, it will follow the song by playing all tracks... not a big deal.

Hope this helps.

 

[MC B2K]

I was not able to get any of my albums to play in the correct order. It's possible that using .wma does work properly, but I didn't feel like going back from where I came... (I have an iPad and iPhone now).

I may dork with things further... but this is ONE of MANY ways to approach things.

On my USB drive, all of my Artist folders are at the root.

 

[Harblar]

Again... Double check that shuffle is not turned on (sometimes mft has problems turning this on/off, I've noticed) and double check that the ID3 tag does indeed include track number information. Also make sure the entire drive has been indexed as this could also cause problems.

I've tried this with many albums and formats (wma, mp3, and aac) and it has worked fine for me on every try.

I'm not saying your method doesn't work, but it should be MUCH simpler than what you're doing. If you need to go to that length to get things to work, I'd say you're either missing something simple in the file tagging/encoding (do yourself a favor and get db Poweramp. Single best/most versatile cd ripper out there) or there is a software/hardware issue in the sync/MFT itself.

The only file format I've had issues with was M4a. They would not display the tag info and some would not play. If your tracks are m4a, convert them to wma lossless... Problem solved. (Db Poweramp can do this with it's batch converter. A few minutes depending on computer speed and number of files.)
A few months back I did a write up on external drives and compatible formats. More detailed info there.

Good luck!

 

[MC B2K]

I'm not saying your method doesn't work, but it should be MUCH simpler than what you're doing. If you need to go to that length to get things to work, I'd say you're either missing something simple in the file tagging/encoding (do yourself a favor and get db Poweramp. Single best/most versatile cd ripper out there) or there is a software/hardware issue in the sync/MFT itself.

I'm a techie, so by nature I test 90 ways to Sunday... There is definitely a problem!

Bottom line, and this is from Ford... the media player has shortcomings. I WILL not be going back to WMA... it was very time consuming to come from WMA.

I have dBpoweramp, and it didn't help... sorry, this may have worked for you, but I posted this as other may be having issues.

Hopefully Ford will release software that has a little more intelligence.

 

[MC B2K]

Okay, after further experimenting, this appears to be an issue with other than wma files. I converted a few albums to wma and made a new usb drive (Low level format, copy files) and as harblar said, it works as expected.

So... if you use wma, you should be fine... if you use anything else, your mileage will vary as they say...

 

[SteVesTruck]

Nice write up bkiggins

 

[MC B2K]

Okay, here's an update... can someone else confirm?

It looks like turning Gracenote on munges things up.

Without it on, both mp3 and wma albums play fine.

With it on, I get the weird behavior where the album displays in the proper order, but when you play the "1st" song, if it's alphabetically in the middle of the tracks listed, you get track 4/11 or the like...

Very strange.