# USB audio, songs not in order



## S-Fitz (Jul 16, 2012)

I'm sure this has been asked, but I cannot find the answer. My USB stick is organized by artist name -> album -> songs within album. When I select the album I want, the songs are listed and played in alphabetical order instead of sequentially. Some albums I have are concept albums that have no breaks between songs which makes for a terrible listening experience when songs are played out of order. Is there a way to change this short of editing the track info on every song so they will appear in sequential order? My head unit is the standard version, no nav.


----------



## ChevyGuy (Dec 13, 2014)

You could try using MP3TAG to make sure the tags in the files are "in order". I'm not sure if the 2011 standard head uses the tags or not, but it's worth a try.

I'm not in a position to search right now, but I remember reading that there is a utility to make sure the songs are in the directory in the correct order. Your radio may simply be reading the songs in the order found (keep in mind that Windows always sorts the order, so you don't know the real order).


----------



## Jim Frye (Mar 16, 2011)

What brand and capacity is the stick? Did you do a hard format on the stick prior to using it? Some sticks have firmware loaded on them to make them act like a HDD to operating systems and this can play havoc with some car audio units. I rip songs to my W7 hard drive with RealPlayer, which puts the track number at the begining of the song title field. This ensures that Windows won't sort the files out of order in that album. Some car audio systems don't read the track number field. Make sure there is nothing in the stick's root directory except the song folders.


----------



## ChevyGuy (Dec 13, 2014)

Ok, a couple of utilties you can use is DriveSort an Fat Sorter. I haven't used them myself, but they're listed in some threads elsewhere about the same problem. Note that these will sort the files into their alphabetical order. So, you'd need to name your files with a 2-digit track number up near the front of the filename so a "alphabetical" sort puts them into the correct order.

Why 2-digit? Because "alphabetically" "10" is between "1" and "2". But with two-digit track numbers, alphabetical sort is the same as numeric sort. (Unless you have more than 99 tracks.)


----------



## S-Fitz (Jul 16, 2012)

Naming shouldn't be the problem, as I have my tracks prefaced with 01, 02, 03.... I formatted my drive to fat32 fs using good old diskpart in the command line, so there is no trace of factory software on it.

Here's an example of my track organization:


----------



## Jim Frye (Mar 16, 2011)

I'm still curious about the stick's manufacturer. I've found some brands that just will not work due to the way they are constructed internally. Their internal construction requires firmware to make them work with computers and look like HDDs. The lack of the firmware, or it's presence, can cause issues with car audio systems. As a result, I've settled on SanDisk Cruzers as being the most usable, and reliable for car audio use.


----------



## S-Fitz (Jul 16, 2012)

Just sorted it out, I needed to fill the contributing artist line. All is well. FYI, my thumb drive is ye olde sandisk cruzer 2 GB, apart from slow read/write speeds it has been a reliable drive for quite a few years now. I definitely agree with your assessment of those drives.


----------



## ChevyGuy (Dec 13, 2014)

S-Fitz said:


> Just sorted it out, I needed to fill the contributing artist line.


Eh? That's a strange one.


----------



## S-Fitz (Jul 16, 2012)

I know, I had the album artist line filled, but the contributing artist line empty. I guess it needed that info to correctly sort all the songs into separate albums properly.


----------



## ChevyGuy (Dec 13, 2014)

S-Fitz said:


> I know, I had the album artist line filled, but the contributing artist line empty. I guess it needed that info to correctly sort all the songs into separate albums properly.


Maybe. But I wouldn't rule out the possibility that re-writing the tags did something too. If nothing else, I think you would have updated the modified time/date stamp.


----------



## S-Fitz (Jul 16, 2012)

ChevyGuy said:


> Maybe. But I wouldn't rule out the possibility that re-writing the tags did something too. If nothing else, I think you would have updated the modified time/date stamp.


Not sure I follow with you here. How would incrementing the modified date allow the songs to be arranged correctly? I entered missing information on that one album that corrected the arrangement from alphabetical to sequential order. The other music remained improperly sorted until I entered the contributing artist info for the other bands as well.

Thanks for the input, I'm happy to have my albums playing correctly now.


----------



## Jim Frye (Mar 16, 2011)

Sure would be nice if the car audio (and the car) manufacturers would document how these car audio systems handled the various inputs (USB, MP3, Bluetooth, etc.. Blind Dumb Luck is not all that productive for the end users. The OM and NM for my car were extremely vague on what was supported, but nothing on how. I know they can't test every device that might attach to the car's audio system, but at least "the how" would help folks.


----------



## ChevyGuy (Dec 13, 2014)

S-Fitz said:


> Not sure I follow with you here. How would incrementing the modified date allow the songs to be arranged correctly?


Changing the tags changes the modified time/date. I know time goes down to the second, possibly more. If the files were updated in order, then sorting by the modified time/date would put the files in order. But why the radio would play files by modified time/date is beyond me. But then why having the album artist filled in changes things, I have no idea. I could (kinda) understand if the fields were different, but not with them all blank.

I also wouldn't rule out that by adding the information that all the tags were all re-written slightly differently and that made the radio happy. (Perhaps the program that originally created the MP3 didn't follow the standard or did it in a way the radio didn't like.) The test there would be to undo the changes and see if the radio goes back to it's old behavior or not. Or to start with a unmodified file and update a different field and see what it does. I'm starting to lean in this direction. It makes a lot more sense.


----------

