Default File Order

[Shaggy Hiker]

The sound system in my car has an odd issue. The result of this issue is that I ended up writing a program that fills folders on a USB stick with randomized songs. I felt that this solved the problem for the most part. The car plays the songs sequentially from the first song in the first folder to the last song in the last folder, or at least that's what I THOUGHT it was doing. Now, I'm not so sure.

The one problem I had with this design is that there is at least 60 hours worth of music in those folders. By the time it reaches the end, I have forgotten where it began, and once it starts repeating, I would like to run the program again and generate a new sequence of music.

Therefore, I changed the program so that the first folder starts with the same four songs. That way, if I heard those four songs in a row, I would know that I have reached the start of the first folder.

I just tried that out today, and it...is interesting. If I look at the folder on my computer, the music appears in alphabetical order, which is the default sort order of the folder. When played in the car, the order appeared random, so I always assumed that the order was the order in which the songs were added to the folder. That would mean that those four indicator songs would be the first four songs in the first folder. In fact, when I look at the contents of the folder in the car, the indicator songs are there, but they are scattered throughout the folder. They aren't first, they aren't last, and they aren't together.

I don't know whether this is an issue with the car software (which is admittedly weird in some ways) or the way files are added to a folder. So, what I'm looking for is some insight as to what is going on here. If the indicator songs were added as the first four files in the folder, won't they be the first four files found? Is this something about how files are organized in the folder, or is this something newly weird about the car software?

[jdc2000]

This might be a hard problem to solve unless we can determine what order the car software is actually displaying the songs in. If that is a "random" order, you may be out of luck. Otherwise, starting with a newly formatted drive, add the 4 songs ONLY in the order you want them to be in AND make sure that they have file names that would be sorted in alphabetical order (1.wav, 2.wav, 3.wav, 4.wav for example).

Insert the drive with the 4 songs on it and see what order they show up in. Turn off the car / radio, remove the drive, restart. Turn off again, insert the drive, restart. Are the songs showing in the same order as before, or did the order change?

[OptionBase1]

If it is supposed to be sequential, is it possible that it is determining the correct order for the songs based on something other than the filename? For example, if these are .mp3 files, is it possibly using ID3 data as the primary sort method?

[Shaggy Hiker]

If it is supposed to be sequential, is it possible that it is determining the correct order for the songs based on something other than the filename? For example, if these are .mp3 files, is it possibly using ID3 data as the primary sort method?

Yes.

What it is NOT doing is ordering things by song name in alphabetic order.

I realized today that I wasn't quite right in my initial assessment. The folders are created on the drive by my randomizer program. It then writes the four indicator songs, followed by the other 251 songs randomly chosen. I thought that the four indicators ended up scattered throughout the 255, but that wasn't the case. The first one was found around the 20th song, then there was a couple songs, then the other three were all together.

So, they were clustered, somewhat. Three were together, the fourth was separated by only a small amount, and the group were in the top 10% of the songs in the folder. Any of that could be accident, but it seems unlikely.

I assume that there has to be some kind of ordering, and probably not something that the car itself is doing. After all, if the car was taking the files in a folder and deciding on some special ordering, any set of files where the sequence is important, like some audio books might have, would be a mess.

How can I see ID3 data?

I should try what jdc2000 recommended, but it won't be soon.

[jdc2000]

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/...-for-mp3-files

https://www.reddit.com/r/Beatmatch/c...of_songs_mp3s/

https://www.vlchelp.com/view-edit-id3-audio-tags/

[OptionBase1]

How can I see ID3 data?

I still use Winamp, and it has an editor for ID3 and ID3V2 data.

One thing I like to do with Winamp is open two instances of it. Adjust one so it plays everything on the left speaker. Adjust the other so it plays everything on the right speaker. Queue up the same playlist in both instances, and have one of the instances of Winamp playing a tiny fraction of a second off from the other. Put on a pair of headphones and it is a trip. It's like an immersive echo. But it literally has to be like hundredths of a second difference. If the difference is too much it just sounds strange.

[Zvoni]

For anything to do with ID3-Tags i use EasyTag
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EasyTag

you can even bulk-edit the ID3-Tags using some weird regex (you know: take filename of mp3, Delimiter is a dash "-", first token is Songname, second token is Artist etc.)
or bulk-edit a bunch of Tags, say like "those 10 mp3 are all from the same band" --> multiselect those 10 mp3, go to Edit ID3-Tag, enter Artist once, and voila

As to your Issue: I seem to remember in my old car (i had an Android-based Sound-System) having something similiar:
I organized my music on the SD-Card in Folders like you did
The Sound-System ignored the Folders completely!!
Though, mine were sorted by ID3-Tag, Songname first, Artist second

Have you looked if your System offers some Options, how to display the songs (like sorting order, use filename or ID3-Tag, or similiar)?

[Shaggy Hiker]

Cars are weird.

I have been away for the last few days. I was using a Ram truck, and put the USB drive into that. At first, it seemed to pick up where it had left off in the other car, but then it seemed to start over the next time I started the truck (I'm not certain about this, but it played a song that it had played just recently). It seemed to ignore folders, or at least not acknowledge that they existed. I wasn't sure if it was picking across all the folders or just within the first folder, though I think it was the latter. In any case, on Thursday afternoon, it started playing the songs in alphabetical order by artist. It certainly wasn't doing that before and I hadn't changed either of the two settings that I could change.

Anyways, that was a work truck and I don't have to understand it.

[Zvoni]

Anyways, that was a work truck and I don't have to understand it.

You don't have to understand your work or you don't have to understand that truck?

[Shaggy Hiker]

Just the truck. The more I think about it, the more bizarre it gets. The truck had a different sort order than my car, but it also changed it's sort order kind of at random halfway through the trip.

[dilettante]

If your infotainment systems support .M3U and/or .WPL playlist files then that might be another solution for you.

Some might only support a single default playlist file named "playlist.m3u" while others can support multiple playlist files. You can choose those through your touch-menu system or on some vehicles by voice command: "PLAY PLAYLIST SlowJazz3" for example.

Such playlist files should go into the root of the flash drive.

[Shaggy Hiker]

I'll have to look into that one. Neither sounds familiar, but then, I haven't looked.

I have a bit more data on it, and it just makes it weirder. The indicator songs don't necessarily show up together and they don't start things out, but at least songs don't come up alphabetically (by artist) as they did in the Dodge Ram I was driving for work.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Lots of people are struggling with this issue and finding different solutions to it. In my case, the solution I want is kind of novel. Most people are trying to play songs in specific orders. I'm trying to play songs in random order, except for that indicator group. There are solutions, and it does seem to be related to ID3 tags, but I'm just not sure that I care all that much. Currently, the situation is pretty good. With four indicator songs, the chance that they will all be separated from one another is quite low. Thus far, one has been, while the other three have remained together. They also don't appear at the beginning of the folder, but after 60-70 hours of playing music in the car, I won't remember the start of the first folder anyways. As indicators, they work just fine even if they aren't at the beginning of the folder.

If they fail to group together enough, then I can do something more.