Still exploring all the features of my new vRS...

 

We decided it would be good to put all our music - mine and my wife's - on a 64GB SD card so that we always had all our music available.  It's working well except for one thing:

 

When looking for any particular album or track, the display shows the directory structure on the SD card, rather than structuring the lists based on Artist name and Album name, as you normally would on an iPod or any other mp3 player.  For most non-classical music this isn't a great problem as the folder names follow the same structure - i.e. a folder with the name of the artist, within which there's a folder for each album but even so it looks ugly as the folder and file names are not always exactly the full artist, album or track names, and of course the tracks have the "mp3" extension on the end.

 

For classical music it's much worse though. I find that the tags assigned by iTunes when ripping classical music are all over the place - inconsistent and not structured in a way that makes sense, so I almost always re-tag my classical music.  The music of course continues to sit in the folders that were assigned when the music was ripped so in the car it's all structured wrongly.  Worse still, I just came across an example where the tracks appeared to be displayed and played in alphabetical order, which meant that for this particular music (an opera) they were played in completely the wrong order.

 

If the lists were built and displayed using the embedded ID3 tags, all would be well and it would work as it does in iTunes or on an iPod/iPhone etc..  

 

What's really strange is that once you're playing a track, it does read the ID3 tags and correctly shows the artist, album and track name (and even the cover art) as stored there, so it's perfectly capable of reading and using this data.

 

I've looked in vain for any way to get it to show the lists based on Artist/Album rather than file names, but there doesn't seem to be an option to do this.

 

Have I missed something?

 

 

I think what you're seeing is correct and the only way it'll work. 

None of my .mp3 extensions are showing but the rest is the same as yours.

Ah - OK - thanks for confirming that.

The mitsumi option is defo the best way to go for full easy to use integration. IMO

The mitsumi option is defo the best way to go for full easy to use integration. IMO

 

Nah... Columbus FTW!  Admittedly, it costs a bit more... but then you get that lovely nice big screen too.  And you don't need any special cables.

Nah... Columbus FTW!  Admittedly, it costs a bit more... but then you get that lovely nice big screen too.  And you don't need any special cables.

 

Which is exactly the same as mistumi so my point still stands.

Which is exactly the same as mistumi so my point still stands.

 

Apart from needing the special cable.  So mine still stands too. 

I have found the best way it to use this program:

 

http://sebass-org.software.informer.com/

 

It organises into a folder structure based on Artist, Album etc. The structure is customisable.

 

Phil

I have found the best way it to use this program:

 

http://sebass-org.software.informer.com/

 

It organises into a folder structure based on Artist, Album etc. The structure is customisable.

 

Phil

 

Interesting.  

 

Actually, I sort of did the same thing with iTunes.  I copied my iTunes media->music folder into a temp directory somewhere, then in iTunes deleted all my music, then re-imported it all from the temp directory.  As it imports music it can (optionally) rebuild a directory structure based on the ID3 tags, so now the structure as seen in the car is correct...

 

...except that tracks still play in the wrong order for some music, so I'm going to have to laboriously rename some of them,  and I still see the .mp3 file extensions, and I see a hidden folder on the SD card that was put there by Spotlight search (I'm on a Mac) and don't seem to be able to delete (even from a terminal window as root).

 

Anyway - mostly it's livable with now.  Thanks for the various thoughts on this.

Edited 3 July, 201411 yr by alancha

The mitsumi option is defo the best way to go for full easy to use integration. IMO

 

Mitsumi is great but the drawback is having to have your ipod in the car at all times. Think I prefer to use the SD, worst case scenario is it gets nicked and that's be much less painful than the ipod going walkies...

 

Got an issue with the start of tracks missing when using the SD though (separate thread going)

Mitsumi is great but the drawback is having to have your ipod in the car at all times. Think I prefer to use the SD, worst case scenario is it gets nicked and that's be much less painful than the ipod going walkies...

 

Got an issue with the start of tracks missing when using the SD though (separate thread going)

 

My ipod can't be seen from outside the car so if someone does steal it then they'd already have broken into the car so an ipod would be insignificant.

... tracks still play in the wrong order for some music, so I'm going to have to laboriously rename some of them...

 

In fact this was a specific problem of my own making to do with track numbers.  It was nothing to do with the Bolero - in fact I think the same would have happened if I'd played that music on my iPod.

 

So, it's all good now.  I have a 64GB SD card, which cost me less than £20, sitting permanently in the car with all our music available whenever we want it. Brilliant!