Having been given a 16Gb sd card I thought I'd load it up with songs for use in the Bolero. Why on earth is it so slow to read the list of files off? Filling the card I never got to play a song, I gave up waiting. Removed lots of songs, down to 5.5Gb. Slow but just about usable (with patience). Is there a trick to laying out the files for maximum performance?

Admittedly the card I'm using is only a class 2 card but it shouldn't be so slow, I can list all the files on the card on a pc in less than a second. The directory structure only has an album of songs in each directory. To me it seems like poor code in the firmware.

Having been given a 16Gb sd card I thought I'd load it up with songs for use in the Bolero. Why on earth is it so slow to read the list of files off? Filling the card I never got to play a song, I gave up waiting. Removed lots of songs, down to 5.5Gb. Slow but just about usable (with patience). Is there a trick to laying out the files for maximum performance?

Admittedly the card I'm using is only a class 2 card but it shouldn't be so slow, I can list all the files on the card on a pc in less than a second. The directory structure only has an album of songs in each directory. To me it seems like poor code in the firmware.

A class 2 card isn't the fastest but I don't think it'd make too much difference in a Bolero at the moment.

I'd 100% agree with you about the firmware because if you put your {slow} card in to a Columbus, then it'll read nearly as fast as your PC.

See this post.

I did some playing about. Using my netbook running linux I scanned every file on the card to identify it it (5.5Gb worth, using "find -exec file" for techy types), it took about 38 seconds. I wonder if the Bolero is doing something similar every time you go to change song/insert the card. I need to speak to the dealer about my lights on monday so I'll query if there's any firmware updates. Wonder if the makers of the radio/Skoda ever thought to test with more than 100 files?

Of course there is a big difference between simply listing filenames on a device and opening each mp3 file to get the metadata for album name, arist, song name, etc, which is almost certainly what the Bolero unit is doing.

Any device worth its salt however should then have some system for storing an indexed version of the files it has examined for quick navigation. It is here, I suspect, the Bolero falls down and simply reparses all the files for each navigation task (supposition as I don't have a Bolero). I know the Dension 300 gateway accessing a USB device will write and refer to an index file for quick navigation. I suspect the Bolero lacks this feature and tries, poorly, to do everything from memory.

Reading every file over and over is what I suspect it is doing, although even if it is doing this its still very slow reading a directory with not many files in. Given the cheap cost of memory it is a little odd it doesn't seem to keep track of what its read before. Unless it does but stores in an (very) inefficient manner with poor index referencing.

Anyone know who makes the Bolero for Skoda?

I've just been trying out a few different SD cards in the Bolero in my new vRS.

And something interesting I've found, is that there is definitely a small, but significant different between read-speeds of different cards in the device.

I don't have a lot of MP3s (only about 200 or so for in-car use) so mercifully I'm not subject to the horrible 45-second re-load times that other users have.

But a bit oddly, I've found the discrepancy between cards isn't reflected by their price.

I loaded the exact same MP3s onto 3 different cards, using the exact same folder-structure.

Card 1 was a brand-new 4GB Sandisk SDHC (class 2) card I'd bought specially for the Bolero

Card 2 was an old 4GB non-HC card made by Datawrite.

Card 3 was a cheap ordinary non-HC 2GB Kingston card which I originally bought for occasional use in a digital camera about a year ago.

And bizarrely, the Sandisk SDHC card was far and away the slowest at being accessed (about 8-9 seconds to relist). The old 4GB Datawrite card was quite a bit quicker at about 5-6 seconds, and the Kingston card was very quick, relisting in about 3 seconds.

And yet this was just a cheapo 2GB card I bought off Ebay

Unfortunately I don't have any high-speed cards to try, but I've found there is definitely a speed-difference between different brands of cards. So maybe trying another brand of cheap card might speed things up a bit?

Or maybe split up a music collection over several cards, as clearly the fewer files present, the faster the Bolero will rescan them

Hi, I'm new.

I've just bought a new Octavia Combi Elegance and also a Transcend 16GB SDHC Class 6 memory card.

After copying say 30 artists(5GB of MP3) to the card, the Bolero only reads 2 or 3 albums / artists!

Surely a brand new car radio should be able to deal with this new card?

Has anyone encountered this?

Thanks in advance,

Chris

You might find this post useful:

- [regarding the Bolero] Yes, it reads SD cards with MP3 files, but it takes forever to read them, and the only way to kind of fix it (and it's not proper fix) is to hide mp3 files in very, very deep directory structure and then serve the unit with playlists only. But even then it doesn't do proper random/shuffle mode.

http://briskoda.net/forums/topic/166437-bolero-or-pioneer/page__view__findpost__p__2031421

Hi, I'm new.

I've just bought a new Octavia Combi Elegance and also a Transcend 16GB SDHC Class 6 memory card.

After copying say 30 artists(5GB of MP3) to the card, the Bolero only reads 2 or 3 albums / artists!

Surely a brand new car radio should be able to deal with this new card?

Has anyone encountered this?

Thanks in advance,

Chris

Chris

look for Danish Viking on here, his software is great for organising playlists. this is his home page http://www.lfsv.dk/diverse/bolero.php

Cheers

Brian

I've tried everything with sorting the SD card.

Like a number of Artists per Folder etc, so I went with a top level folder structure using the alphabet A-Z

Then I got the: Cannot read SD card error.

My head is wrecked!

Why doesnt this just work?

I'm thinking, there's a firmware upgrade needed?

thanks in advance

Chris

Chris

look for Danish Viking on here, his software is great for organising playlists. this is his home page http://www.lfsv.dk/diverse/bolero.php

Cheers

Brian

I've tried everything with sorting the SD card.

Like a number of Artists per Folder etc, so I went with a top level folder structure using the alphabet A-Z

Then I got the: Cannot read SD card error.

My head is wrecked!

Why doesnt this just work?

I'm thinking, there's a firmware upgrade needed?

thanks in advance

Chris

I found the above software worked perfectly, copy your music across to your card in folders with no subfolders (This is very important, just the mp3 tracks inside the folder) and then choose the 1st option on the software, leave it to do its stuff and it creates playlists which the Bolero is happy with. If you want you can then add more folders (Again no subfolders, just mp3's) and run option 1 on the software to create more playlists.

Hope this helps

Brian

I do this:

Create a New Folder> Change name> Artists/Band name> Copy tracks to this renamed folder

Follow same procedure for each Album...Seems ok to me

I have just had a new car with a Bolero and was dreading using the SD card after reading soem of this thread.

I need not have worried. It's great.

Brought a class 10 16GB card from 7dayshop for £17.99, loaded it with about 12GB of songs, and it starts up within about 5 seconds. What more could anyone ask for as 12GB is about 1,700 tracks?

Very impressed.

OK - anything up to 2G is plain SD. Anything above 2G is SDHC. The 'online' Bolero manual says 'SD memory cards ... with a capacity of up to 2 GB' and 'Other memory cards that fit by their size, such as SDHC cards, are not read by the unit.' - i.e. SD only.

However my 'hardcopy' manual that came with the car says that SDHC cards up to 32GB are fine, and putting an SDHC card into my unit (in a 2011 unit) does seem to work - it just takes forever to cownload the directory structure. My unit also has 'MP3' on the top right of the unit.

So it looks like the early units will only cope with SD up to 2G, and later units can take SDHC up to 32G.

Edited 3 June, 201214 yr by avi4tor