Organising tracks from iTunes onto SD card?

[Knowsley]

My apologies if this has been covered before, but I haven't been able to find a conclusive answer here or elsewhere! I have around 28gb of music in iTunes (I have a Mac). I have successfully converted all so that I now have an MP3 version of all the songs - around 5000 altogether. I can copy all the songs on to my new 32gb SD card, but haven't found a simple way of organising the tracks into the albums they originated from. When you open the SD card the tracks are by name only, so there's not even an easy way of seeing the name of the artist, let alone the album that the song came from. It would take days (maybe weeks!) to create folders and having identified the artist and album to then drag the tracks into the relevant folders. I'm guessing someone must have designed a piece of software to make this process simple? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

[numskull]

My apologies if this has been covered before, but I haven't been able to find a conclusive answer here or elsewhere! I have around 28gb of music in iTunes (I have a Mac). I have successfully converted all so that I now have an MP3 version of all the songs - around 5000 altogether. I can copy all the songs on to my new 32gb SD card, but haven't found a simple way of organising the tracks into the albums they originated from. When you open the SD card the tracks are by name only, so there's not even an easy way of seeing the name of the artist, let alone the album that the song came from. It would take days (maybe weeks!) to create folders and having identified the artist and album to then drag the tracks into the relevant folders. I'm guessing someone must have designed a piece of software to make this process simple? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

How have you reformatted the tracks? I use illustrate dbpoweramp converter. This holds ID-tag info and then I just copied the reformatted folders (albums) onto the SD card?

[Raptor]

I found it quite easy to use folders. Surely if you have all the songs in albums on your Mac, it is not too big an issue to creat folders on the sd card then drag the mp3's from the album to the folder.

If you find the sd will not play have a look at Blueharvest, this will remove the annoying folders that the Mac puts on the card, you can they play the music ok

[The Zee]

Give this a go. Using your mac, Open "Finder", locate itunes folder, if you expand the folder you will now see all the music by artist in separate sub folders (as you would if looking at itunes itself). Create one new folder on the SD card so you don't copy to the SD card root then drag and drop the high level itunes folder into the new folder on the SD card. It should copy your whole library as it looks in itunes.

 

If you also have movies and podcasts etc in your library it might be better to go by the expanded route and select all the music sub folders 'cause the movies will only take up space on the card and can't be played anyway,

 

it worked for me when I needed an SD card in my other car.

[Knowsley]

Give this a go. Using your mac, Open "Finder", locate itunes folder, if you expand the folder you will now see all the music by artist in separate sub folders (as you would if looking at itunes itself). Create one new folder on the SD card so you don't copy to the SD card root then drag and drop the high level itunes folder into the new folder on the SD card. It should copy your whole library as it looks in itunes.

 

If you also have movies and podcasts etc in your library it might be better to go by the expanded route and select all the music sub folders 'cause the movies will only take up space on the card and can't be played anyway,

 

it worked for me when I needed an SD card in my other car.

 

Thank you. This sounds good except for the fact that I now have two copies of each track, one as an mp3 and one as an aac, so I would have the problem of deleting the aac tracks from the sd card once everything was transferred over (although actually there wouldn't be room on the card for both file types). My intention was to delete the mp3 tracks from iTunes once I'd copied everything over.

[Knowsley]

How have you reformatted the tracks? I use illustrate dbpoweramp converter. This holds ID-tag info and then I just copied the reformatted folders (albums) onto the SD card?

 

Thank you. I converted them within iTunes so now have two copies of everything. I want to retain the original aac files.

[Mayor of Newark]

My Columbus will not play .m4a tracks  - should it?  It is fine with .mp3 tracks. I'm using Blue Harvest to clean all the hidden Mac stuff off whichever SD card I shove in, so it can't be the confusion they cause to the Columbus.

 

BTW, I do as suggested above - create a folder on the SD Card, then load my iTunes tracks to that and they are always stay grouped by artist.

Edited 5 November, 2014 by Mayor of Newark

[Knowsley]

I found it quite easy to use folders. Surely if you have all the songs in albums on your Mac, it is not too big an issue to creat folders on the sd card then drag the mp3's from the album to the folder.

If you find the sd will not play have a look at Blueharvest, this will remove the annoying folders that the Mac puts on the card, you can they play the music ok

 

I have started this, but think it's going to be a long process with so many different artists etc!

[Knowsley]

My Columbus will not play .m4a tracks  - should it?  It is fine with .mp3 tracks. I'm using Blue Harvest to clean all the hidden Mac stuff off whichever SD card I shove in, so it can't be the confusion they cause to the Columbus.

 

The Columbus won't play .m4a tracks. I am also using Blue Harvest.

[Mayor of Newark]

Thanks.

[psycholist]

However if you want the radio to select tracks at random from your complete collection of music files then they all have to go in the root folder with no folder hierarchy at all :(. I'm pretty sure the Columbus has more than enough processing power to allow searching of the files, but no threat of that being available either, which would eliminate the need to sort the files as they go on to the SD card in the first place... 

[linni]

However if you want the radio to select tracks at random from your complete collection of music files then they all have to go in the root folder with no folder hierarchy at all :(.  

 

That`s not correct. Someone here in forum gave exellent hint and I am using it constantly:

you have to put only one track into root level of SD card. Then start playing this same track and select MIX from options. And Columbus plays randomly all songs, no matter they are in folders and subfolders or not.

[Paul90]

What I did was to change the directory that iTunes stores the music before converting the tracks to low rate MP3.

If you use the keep organised option then it will create all the artist / album folders for you.

Although the original song will still appear in the library, this is just the library database file.

If you look at the new music directory only the MP3 versions will be there.

 

And it leaves my lossless files in the original destination (for playing through the hi-fi at home).

I just delete the library file that has two copies of every song and revert to the original library file and music folder.

 

Simples.

 

Obviously make sure you have back ups before trying this out.

No way am I ever re-ripping 1500 CDs so I have multiple backups in different locations.

 

 

Paul

[The Zee]

Thank you. This sounds good except for the fact that I now have two copies of each track, one as an mp3 and one as an aac, so I would have the problem of deleting the aac tracks from the sd card once everything was transferred over (although actually there wouldn't be room on the card for both file types). My intention was to delete the mp3 tracks from iTunes once I'd copied everything over.

 

 

Thank you. I converted them within iTunes so now have two copies of everything. I want to retain the original aac files.

It is a pain that the Columbus will not play AAC files. I am not an expert but would suggest that you copy the itunes library to your desk top then select and delete all the AAC files (quick job jb sort by file type) then you are left with just the ones Columbus can read then copy to the SD card. You will end up with just one version of the correct files. You should only have to do this once. In future you can change the default settings in itunes from AAC to mp format. Any new cd's you burn will be in the correct format for the sd card and will still play on ipod's, itouch and ipad's. It's an Apple thing!

[mannyo]

There is one other problem here, you are taking a low bitrate lossy compressed AAC format file from iTunes and converting it to another lossy compressed file in MP3 format. Converting this way will always give you a file that when played has even more detail missing than the previous one. Nothing can add back in what has already been removed, so the result is a file which lacks even more top end and bass.

 

I am sure that some people who complain of poor sound quality have gone down this route, since most complaints are about lack of bass or poor treble.

 

The preferred option is to re-rip the music in its entirety using lossless AAC, then you can convert that to MP3 with minimal fuss and less detail lost, or if disk space is a premium alter the iTunes settings so the default bitrate MP3 at 256kbps as a minimum.

 

http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php?showtopic=71237

 

The Columbus ignores ID3 tags when navigating the folder structure, so you'll need folders at the root of the SD Card like

 

Artist > ALBUM1

 

Artist2 > ALBUM2

Artist2 > ALBUM3

 

etc.

 

or they will all just appear as a long list of filenames.

[JakeBlade]

I convert from FLAC (I am a bit a.nal about my home hifi) to mp3 256kbps, and am one of those that complain about the lack of bass.  I did notice a slight improvement in bass when playing the original source CD in Columbus vs the same track on mp3.  But it was small.  I concluded that it could either be down to an inferior DAC circuit for the SD card, against the CD-player DAC circuit, or it could be down to mp3 encoding missing out bits in the bass frequency range.  

 

In any case I invested in an active subwoofer to go in the boot.  To determine the bass cut-off frequency for the subwoofer I used some low frequency test tracks.  It highlighted on my car (running on standard speakers) that there is a lot of distortion from the bass/mid-range speakers as the bass frequency gets lower.  Not unsurprising that result, but what did surprise me was that the frequency wasn't very low - hence a lack of bass, and lack of clear bass; on my car anyway.  Even worse when you ask the same speakers to also try to do a reasonable job on mid-range.

 

I've gone a bit OT, but hopefully helps to explain why some people complain about a lack of bass: and a path of recovery.

[Knowsley]

I have spent a considerable part of this week trying to achieve my aim  . Most of today was spent creating files and copying the tracks over (I thought I was making real progress!) - all seemed to be ok. iTunes then crashed, and about half the tracks I'd copied disappeared, leaving just the folders with the artists' names. I'm mystified, as I'd have thought that once they were copied they were reasonably safe. I have decided to give up on this, and have ordered what I hope is a reasonable quality audio/aux lead for my iPod! The fact that the audio quality is probably worse as well is a double whammy. I might eventually buy one of those MDI thingumajigs. Thanks everyone for your help!

[The Zee]

If you are trying to copy itunes purchased songs this could be the problem as they are DRM protected and can only be played on your ipod.

As you are having problems the MDI would be the answer with no loss of quality. Just a suggestion but when you are set up with the MDI go the the "Media Set-up" in Columbus and locate the "Aux input level" and select "Low". From my experience this is the only setting that likes ipod. Medium or High seems to bring in distortion. Well at least it does on mine.

[Hawkeye13]

Had to convert files so I could use the SD card in my Passat CC.

 

Looking at an Elegance 4x4 & salesman told me SD card slot is only for use with Columbus sat nav. Is it a case of him not knowing what he's talking about?

[JakeBlade]

Had to convert files so I could use the SD card in my Passat CC.

Looking at an Elegance 4x4 & salesman told me SD card slot is only for use with Columbus sat nav. Is it a case of him not knowing what he's talking about?

Yes, he is talking nonsense. If your passat cc has sat nav, then it is pretty much the same head unit as Columbus.

[Martin VRS]

Hi, Last time I checked, I Tunes wasn't DRM protected, so that won't be causing the problem. As long as you convert to MP3's you shouldn't have a problem.