[dzaborn]

In anticipation of the arrival of my car, I am trying to plan out how I am going to manage my audio collection. I am not an iPhone/iTunes user so I am planning to use a Cruzer Fit USB flash drive as c.cash suggested in another thread.

1> Is there a particular way I need to arrange my mp3's on my flash drive? I assume they can be nested in folders? I had planned to have a folder for each album on the root of the flash drive, basically just like I have them stored on my PC.

2> Does the Nav read all of the mp3's and then present you a library based on the mp3 tag info that you can display/sort via Album, Artist, or Genre sort of how Windows Media Player does it or do you have to navigate through the flash drive just like you would if you were exploring the folders on the drive via the PC? With WMP player the location of your mp3's is unimporant, making the accuracy of your mp3 tag info the most critical.

3> How are playlists handeled/displayed? If the Nav does present you a library, then I assume I do not need to include playlists for each album on my drive?... rather only playlists for my custom compilations? Can you create custom playlists directly in iDrive and store them?

4> I assume I could select an album, and then repeat or shuffle that album only? Can you repeat or shuffle a custom playlist?

I wish I could get a hold of the Navigation/iDrive manual prior to the car arriving. To my knowledge, it is not available for download.

Thanks for any info!

[ibimmer954]

The manual doesn't have any good information about your kinds of questions anyway. I have a slightly older Nav system, but I think the behaviors are about the same.

My Nav has a mode where you can see the folders and drill down to the files that way. Or it has the mode where it will create a database of the media tag information and allow you to select songs that way. So you can do it either way.

You can include *.m3u files as playlists and it will let you select them as well. Make sure the path of the files on the drive matches the path of the files in the playlist.

The Nav will read non-DRM AAC files as well (straight off the iTunes store) so you don't have to convert them to MP3.

One problem I have found though is that the car takes a while when you first start it up to scan all of the files again. It's quite annoying... the media isn't available until the car has done it's complete scan. I found that having a lot of directories significantly slowed down the scan. Maybe the newer Navs don't have this issues anymore.

I ended up putting all my media files in one big directory and creating playlists. You can also ask the car to play songs based on Artist/Album/whatever. It's more convenient for me to just make playlists. You select the playlist and you're done. Less distracting.

[vigalent]

Originally Posted by dzaborn

In anticipation of the arrival of my car, I am trying to plan out how I am going to manage my audio collection. I am not an iPhone/iTunes user so I am planning to use a Cruzer Fit USB flash drive as c.cash suggested in another thread.

1> Is there a particular way I need to arrange my mp3's on my flash drive? I assume they can be nested in folders? I had planned to have a folder for each album on the root of the flash drive, basically just like I have them stored on my PC.

2> Does the Nav read all of the mp3's and then present you a library based on the mp3 tag info that you can display/sort via Album, Artist, or Genre sort of how Windows Media Player does it or do you have to navigate through the flash drive just like you would if you were exploring the folders on the drive via the PC? With WMP player the location of your mp3's is unimporant, making the accuracy of your mp3 tag info the most critical.

3> How are playlists handeled/displayed? If the Nav does present you a library, then I assume I do not need to include playlists for each album on my drive?... rather only playlists for my custom compilations? Can you create custom playlists directly in iDrive and store them?

4> I assume I could select an album, and then repeat or shuffle that album only? Can you repeat or shuffle a custom playlist?

I wish I could get a hold of the Navigation/iDrive manual prior to the car arriving. To my knowledge, it is not available for download.

Thanks for any info!

My understanding is the library functions (searching based on artist, genre etc) only works with media stored on the cars HDD....

[c.cash]

> Vigalent is incorrect. The same search functions are available from a flash drive.

> ibimmer346's info is good. The manual is pretty useless for this stuff. And I agree -- don't bother with all the folders. Just keep all your mp3s at the root level with your .m3u playlists. I disagree with him about load times. It took a long time the first time I plugged in the flash drive, but after that it loads right away. Granted, I only have 8 GB of data on mine... I'm sure some people have 100 gig collections, and I don't know how that would go.

> The order of songs in a playlist seems to be the way it was when you exported it from the PC. It sounds like you're using WMP, but in iTunes, having the down arrow (v) selected as your sort order when exporting the playlist seems to make it load the same way in the car.

> In iTunes I think it's best to create a master playlist for the car. Then you have a "home base" for all the files. Then you just Select All, and literally drag the songs to your flash drive from the app. Not sure if you can do this with WMP. (For the record, I'm using a PC with iTunes.)

This master playlist is great, and necessary, because if I select "Browse Directory", I get the actual file names of the mp3s instead of the metadata name of the song (as it would appear in iTunes). The list looks like "01 (Vamos); 01 About Today"... etc. Your list may or may not look like this depending on how iTunes or your media player handles file naming. These file names aren't very useful when I want to just go to a certain artist's song. The playback order won't make any sense either. (Note: when you use "Search", you *do* see the metadata names in the results.)

My master playlist in iTunes has songs sorted by artist... so in the car, the playlist shows a list of all songs, arranged by artist alphabetically. I wish I saw the artists' names in the list too, but I know my music well enough to know "where i am" in the list based on the artists of the songs. Hope that makes sense. Someday we'll have columns with sort tabs at the top. Until then, I like this best.

> Doing a Search backs you into a corner. Say you search for all songs by a certain artist. After a search, the only list available in the HUD or, on the iDrive screen's current track (the speaker icon) are the results of that search. That's why you need playlists. Without them, you're stuck in the Results list until you do a new search.

> "Random" works with any playlist or search. Click "option", then select Random.

[FreoGuitar]

> ibimmer346's info is good. The manual is pretty useless for this stuff. And I agree -- don't bother with all the folders. Just keep all your mp3s at the root level with your .m3u playlists. I disagree with him about load times. It took a long time the first time I plugged in the flash drive, but after that it loads right away. Granted, I only have 8 GB of data on mine... I'm sure some people have 100 gig collections, and I don't know how that would go.


1st post but I think I can help address one of the points raised in respect to arranging files.

I have a huge music collection...more than 14000 songs, almost 100 GB.

To begin with I used an old ipod first which seemed to "load" music quickly soon after start up though album art was of poor quality. The ipod also did charge which I beleive is because I have extended connectivity. Overall a good option if you have an ipod with the EC option. However, I still use my ipod in the house and didn't want to have to plug it in and out all the time.

I therefore purchased a 500GB portable drive. I first dragged all my songs off itunes (as suggested by selecting all) onto the drive. I plugged the drive into the car though this almost caused idrive to have a melt down! Nothing came up apart from "reading"which it continued to say depsite having it plugged in for one hour. The songs were not arranged into folders though I suspect the ID tags were good as it came off itunes.

The last thing I tried seems to work the best for me. I found the itunes music folder on my PC C drive which has seperated all music files into folders based on the artist. I transfered this onto the purchased drive. This "loads" relatively quickly after car start up (though not as fast as the ipod) and seems to support all the search and random functions. The album art quality also appears to be superior.

Hope this helps.

[c.cash]

Originally Posted by FreoGuitar

I therefore purchased a 500GB portable drive.

Good to know. Which drive did you buy? Small enough to keep in armrest? Manual does not recommend drives that need too much power.

[FreoGuitar]

Originally Posted by c.cash

Good to know. Which drive did you buy? Small enough to keep in armrest? Manual does not recommend drives that need too much power.

I bought the WD Passport USB drive. Fits snuggly in the armrest in the space where the snap in adapter is. It doesn't move around at all.

Didn't know about the manual recommendation in respect to drives that do not use much power. I've had no problems yet. Thinking about this more, the EC option allows charging and use of an ipod from the USB so I guess it should be able to cope with a drive alone.

See link:

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/WD-USB-3-...item4165658b81

[vigalent]

Apologies if my info was duff. I'm sure when I tried it, it didn't work.