Car's mp3 player: it does read most of files (songs) but not all

HaruEraclea

Commendable
Nov 26, 2016
1
0
1,510
As title says, in my car (ford b-max if that matters)'s mp3 usbdrive player does not read all of the songs on the usb flashdrive.
It only reads most of them but not all.
Before you ask me: yes all of the songs are in the same .mp3 format.
I didn't check if this pattern is for every single song that does not "see" (read) but for some of the songs that i remember, among the ones that i noticed aren't seen, have all of the infos in the details of the file: from album title to year and other details and even have the cover image of their album if you visualize them from pc.
Useless to say that if i read the same usb drive with the pc, everything works just fine: every single mp3 is "seen" and can be played with no error.
So i really do not understand why my car's player picks certain songs and decides not to see them..
Do you have any insight or idea to possibly fix this?
Luckily as i said, it does not apply for every single song and it is a problem that concerns only a few but still i don't get why. (and it bothers me a little)
 
Solution

Knowing everything under the universe takes too much effort. :)

Because I installed my own system, went through several heads, early adopter to MP3 in cars... I finally gave up and decided the best method is to simply iPod/iPhone my tunes to the car via Bluetooth and it ALWAYS work, any car, and am done. But that was a dozen years ago, maybe it's better now, not holding my breath.

1. Car systems, like routers are finicky on file system being used, FAT/FAT32 is common, they seems to subscribe to early DOS file systems and never improved, so you can run into file size, cluster size, sector size blah-blah.

2. Audio files metadata uses the common ID3 tag to convey file...

Knowing everything under the universe takes too much effort. :)

Because I installed my own system, went through several heads, early adopter to MP3 in cars... I finally gave up and decided the best method is to simply iPod/iPhone my tunes to the car via Bluetooth and it ALWAYS work, any car, and am done. But that was a dozen years ago, maybe it's better now, not holding my breath.

1. Car systems, like routers are finicky on file system being used, FAT/FAT32 is common, they seems to subscribe to early DOS file systems and never improved, so you can run into file size, cluster size, sector size blah-blah.

2. Audio files metadata uses the common ID3 tag to convey file information on display, for searching etc but there has been several versions of ID3, your head may not have compatibility with all versions of ID3.

3. Codec used. You will be aware, many version of codec out there. While in a PC, you have the flexibility of keep loading a new codec until it works, you don't have that luxury in a Head Unit, and the worse thing is, incompatible codec, the dumb HU simply doesn't play the file. Does it give you a friendly "hey, I can't play this file?" Nope. It just skips it. Great huh.

4. Speaking of file structures, early Head Units used the 6-disc changer mechanism and treated your MP3 folders and they could only deal with 6 folders and that was it. Probably improved by now but I haven't followed.

5. Head Units also seems to reverse engineer iPod/iPhone interfacing, without permission from Apple, so most of the time it works but Apple only had to make a little change and BAM! you wait-and-wait-and-wait for firmware update. Should be better with CarPlay now (Apple sanctioned) but early reports doesn't make me feel like running out to buy one.

Seems to me, car audio vendors just want to sell me the stuff, and if problems, very little support, and me spending my valuable time trying to figure things out, reason why, paragraph#2.

By your report, it hasn't improved much since I played with them. If you must know more, am sure the folks at mp3car.com can satisfy your curiosity. I've moved on.
 
Solution