Hi wondering if anyone can help , I recently downloaded music in mp3 format onto my phone HTC hd desire , all plays fine on Columbus through Bluetooth but can't see track info on head unit. I copied the files from phone onto sd card and the unit doesnt read the file , error message wrong file format . The music files are mp3 format , play perfect on pc . I then ripped a cd to mp3 format and loads and plays perfect off sd card . Any thoughts on the files off my phone ?

I've had a similar experience with track information not showing via Bluetooth from my Galaxy SII in my car and on other head units, normally a reboot of the phone sorts it out.

I would guess the files you got off your phone are non standard in some way, are you even sure they are mp3 and not some other standard like aac? I know with my Samsung I need to specify if I want an mp3 when I copy stuff off, by default it is something else my PC wont even play.

There are various different standards for how metadata (track info) is encoded in MP3 files. Some of the common recent ones are "ID3v1", "ID3v2", "APEv1" and "APEv2" (the newest).

Our current Columbus (2011 version software) seems to support "ID3v1", "ID3v2". This replaced the one which came with the car as new (2008) and which died. That was even fussier still

Issues in the area Tag support are with many devices. My Internet Radio (Roberts Stream 83i) won't even play or list MP3 which are tagged in formats it does not understand.

I suspect the details of the formats supported vary between software versions of Columbus.

The good news is if you find out (probably by trial and error) which formats your Columbus supports there are loads of tools let you manage and convert the metadata formats.

I use both the tools built into Dolphin and Nautilus as well as the excellent "Easytag" if I need to do a lot - but I use Linux, not Windows. But you should be able to find similar utilities for Windows or Macs by searching Google.

Edited 19 April, 201313 yr by AJB1

Thks for tge info much appreciated