Ping mp3-isti

OK, so I'm relatively new to the iMusic thang, but as both cars have
SD card readers (and one doesn't have a CD changer) it makes sense to
load loadsa MP3s onto SD card.

Which is all well and good, but I found out quite soon that the VW,
two annabit years old, doesn't support the SD/HC cards, so 2Gb maximum
is the limit. Well, that's still quite a lot of music, so NP.

So I went out and bought a new normal SD card (gawd knows where the 2
or 3 I used to have have disappeared to) and loaded some MP3s onto it.
These were mainly converted from youtube (as I only have some of them
on vinyl) and they all play perfectly well on the laptop, both from
disk and when copied to the SD card.

Now the odd thing - these files all play fine in the VW, but the Audi
refuses to play _nearly_ all of them. Anything burned from CD is fine,
and about two out of the 30 or so tracks I'd converted also play OK,
but the others simply skip over, or give 'file corrupt' type messages.

Now I know **** all about the contents of MP3 sound files, but maybe
somebody else can explain what could be causing this odd behaviour.
And how to resolve it, hopefully. Anyone?

 

Probably the Audi doesn't like the bitrates. Look at the file info
(right click under windows) and see what the bitrate is, compare a track
that works against one that doesn't. I'm sure there are loads of
utilities that can convert them, try Audacity.

 

I presume this is the RNS-E type DVD satnav?

It's either
- too high bitrate
- crazy characters in filenames or too long filenames
- some RNS-Es don't like the low-speed SD cards

 

Sadly, all files, including ones I've ripped from CD, are the same, at
128kbps. So it's not that, thanks anyway.

 

huh

A few other thoughts:

It's possible that the card actually is corrupt and the one in the VW is
a bit better at recovering from read errors.

It might be that there is a file size limit: are the failures all long
tracks?

It could be that the ID3 metadata is screwing things up - strange
characters or differing versions of the ID3 standard.

What did you use to rip the tracks?

 

Aye. A quick google reveals that you are not alone. Obviously the player
is a load of shite.

 

What, the Audi one?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID3

It's a really shit metadata format which involves prepending a data block
at the beginning of the file.

I just had a look at a file downloaded from youtube-mp3.org and they're
using ID3 version 2.4.0, which some players have problems with.

Try using this on them:

http://www.mp3tag.de/

 

Google audi SD card and it seems to me lots of people having similar
problems.

 

Not really. None of them sound like what I'm getting, but are mostly
related to older models. The one I've got is in a 2010 car (TT) and
reads the HC cards quite happily. Titles are displayed correctly, but
file contents are clearly not readable by that system.

 

OK, so I'm running it, and can see that the tags are ID3v2.3 . So what
should I change it to, and indeed how, as I seem to be able to edit
everything but this field.

 

Belay that question - I'm starting to work it out now.

It's definitely tag-related. If I use the above pgm to remove the
tags, the files then show as being ID3v2.4. The other tag info was
added by WMP, which I had used to group into album/artist etc. without
knowing what it was doing - it's clear now that it's looking at a
specific tag database (no choice offered) and adding this info.

Anyway, with all the tags removed, everything plays just fine.
Although obviously without the album/track info being displayed.

I'll play around some more with the suggested tag sources and see if
any of them _don't_ make the files unreadable in the audi.

Thanks muchly, BTW. FOAK to the rescue as always!

 

So it's all Windows' fault. Figures, I guess.

Oddly, the first time I 'remove' the tags, there's still a tag there,
which is the 2.4 one on the original file. WMP seems to be adding a
tag, while still leaving the original in place. Not too surprising
that the resulting file may not always be usable.

Anyway, pretty much sorted now, just without additional tag info,
which I can kuve with.

Thanks again.

 

Media Monkey, an itunes alternative, is very good at editing tags. Takes
a while to get used to but if you're just starting on the digital audio
path, I would recommend it whole-heartedly.

 

No, it's the shit player in your Audi. There's a standard for
MP3 tags which your Audi doesn't handle; that's not WMP's fault.

 

Heh. Trust Microsoft to do something braindead like that.

np.

 

It doesn't have that "copyright protection" shit does it? Like some TV's
these days where you can watch a downloaded TV episode, but not a downloaded
(pirate) film unless some wag has managed to circumvent the protection?

Just a thought, like.

 

Actually, further experimentation reveals that it's not MS's fault.
Any tags in the 2.3 format seem to **** it up, whetehr added by WMP or
other tools. So it's the Audi reader's fault.