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USB album tracks not played in the correct order

24K views 48 replies 17 participants last post by  teeninvader 
#1 ·
As per the title, when I select to play an album the songs are listed and play in alphabetical order. This was not the case in my R56.

A lot of albums need to be played in the correct order to flow correctly.

Anyone any ideas on how to sort this? Have I missed anything on setting up playback of albums?

Thanks :)
 
#2 ·
I get this when you have more than 1 album for the artist. I have found you need to select the album them scroll to the tracks beneath, click on that & it lists the tracks as the are on the album, select the 1st one & bobs your uncle :). I found the if you have more than 1 album for the artist & you was to play all songs it does it alphabetically. Very frustrating. Would be interested if there is an easier way
 
#5 ·
Setting up the Hard drive with USB sticks is not as simple as it should be.
I managed to duplicate numerous tracks & deletion of tracks is both time consuming & risky as it's easy to delete the entire collection.
So I went back to basics,deleted the collection, & re-organised 7 USB sticks but after re-imputting 5 sticks the USB connection failed so i'm now booked in at my dealers for an investigation & hopefully a simple fix.They'll probably need to install a replacement Hard Drive but ...
I've worked with USB drives for years & have never encountered a connection issue so maybe there's a problem with the F56 IT hardware.
Anyway i'm still loving the Cooper despite the frustrating Media options.
All a question of trial & error, just not too keen on the error bit.
 
#7 ·
I tried to sort music into playlists, for importing via USB, but the system was having none of it. It imports the songs, but not the playlists, and only plays them alphabetically, based on song titles, so you get a really odd order of play. In fact, more random than Random! Did some hunting on the web, and someone advised exporting the playlist from iTunes as an xml file, and saving this on the same USB stick, but this didn't resolve it either. It imports the songs quickly, but is not interested in sorting them in any order.
 
#9 ·
It's the same problem with both: neither the external source nor the Music Collection (HD) recognise playlists. Once you plug in the USB it automatically starts to download the contents into the Music Collection, but it does this as a single dump of songs. It doesn't help if you try to load individual playlists one at a time, on separate USB sticks, either. If you put the USB stick into any other player, the folders are all present and correct. I am creating the FAT 32 formatted USB via iTunes, on an iMac; mostly AAC files.
 
#10 ·
i don't have the hard drive, just USB.

I think a very laborious solution would be to number/label the tracks for each album on the stick.

e.g.

A. No More Heroes
B. Golden Brown
C. The Raven
D. Peaches
etc.

Note, these are songs from my favourite artist - the Stranglers ;-)

I am very tempted to email MINI as this is an issue. I did not have this problem in my R56. Surely they can see that a music system should play an album as the artist intended.
 
#11 ·
It plays the songs on the hard drive in alphabetical order, regardless of the artists. So you would get 'A Hard Day's Night' followed by 'A Little Night Music', assuming your musical collection stretches from the Beatles to Mozart. I initially loaded about 1000 songs, before realising this. I am still hoping there is a quick fix for this, but have not contacted Mini yet (I've only had it a few days)
 
#12 ·
It plays the songs on the hard drive in alphabetical order, regardless of the artists
Holy cow, that's ridiculous. Wonder who came up with that brilliant idea.

Could you add some detail on the filesystem and directory structure you have on your UFD? I haven't found any information on that subject in the owner's manual. I've been assuming that it works with FAT32, but there's no information that I've found on the limit of folder and file count, path and filename length, tolerance of spaces, etc. etc.

For those who are thinking it's "laborious" to change the file tags, it's not. In theory you can incorporate the pathname as prefix text to the actual title/file within the title tag. There are a lot of free utilities that can do this, such as MP3Tag. You can perform the operation on the entire UFD contents at once. The only downside is that the title display will now include the pathname.
 
#13 ·
i tried my USB again today, i dropped a load of random music on it from my itunes library using win explorer, some by selecting the individual album folder, some by selecting a whole artist folder with album folders inside

on the USB when plugged into the car (with no internal hard drive) i can search and select by album, artist, genre, composer, all songs and a couple more options that i can't recall just now. selecting an album presents all the tracks on that album in correct order. it doesn't seem to care if the files are in sub folders or not.

i'm not trying to be smart or clever here, but what this demonstrates is that the car software is capable of sorting music files on a USB correctly as you'd expect.
 
#15 ·
The Music Collection (what the system calls its hard drive) does do all these search things, but then you have to want to listen to one particular album by one particular artist: that is the only time you get the songs in the order they were intended by the artist. If you search the artist only, you get an alphabetical list by song title, across however many albums you have downloaded. But most importantly, it just completely ignores the playlists sub directories when it is importing from the USB stick. I don't really buy or listen to music by the album or artist anymore. I will buy tracks piece-meal, and then save them in playlists: like 'Electro Chilled' or 'Late' or 'Summer 14'. These playlists work across all iPhones/iPods/iPads, and seem to work fine on other non-Apple systems too. Half the time I won't necessarily know the name of the artist or song, but I know exactly what to expect if I select 'Electro Chilled' or whatever. You can see playlists fine if you use a cable to connect the iPhone via the USB, but then it defeats the purpose of having the hard drive. (And no, you can't just download the iPhone content, as if it was a USB stick: I tried it and it doesn't let you). I thought it might be a quirk of using iTunes via a Mac, (although the USB stick is formatted FAT32) but the Mini manual says it does support AAC files, as well as MP3. And it does download the tracks without issue, as well as the title information. I have contacted Mini with the query, and will feedback any information that I get.
 
#14 ·
My USB stick is structured as, e.g.

Guns N' Roses
--> Appetite for Destruction
----> 1 Welcome to the Jungle.mp3

Both Windows Media Player and cdEx (my preferred ripper) can easily name the tracks to your liking.

When I navigate the structure, I always navigate by folder. I'm just disappointed I can't do any of the folder selection (or artist, album) etc using the controller on the MFSW.

Oli
 
#16 ·
If I'm reading this correctly, it appears that Hat and olires are experiencing different behavior of their audio system. Basically Hat says works okay and olires says no it doesn't. Could you two post up what version of the audio system you have? It also makes you wonder if there maybe was a running firmware change that made it work right in some cases.

I'm getting the base North American audio system (whenever the car decides to get on the boat) and will have a UFD ready to go to test how it works.
 
#18 · (Edited)
Here's a set of pictures taken of my screen. this first one shows the USB stick 'KINGSTON' selected



this shows the first level of search available:


this is searching by album name across all artists:


this is the track listing within an album, in album order


this is showing an artist selected (Doves) and the options available to select by album or all tracks


this is the selection of albums available for the artist


and again an album selected from the menu above, showing tracks in album order


the USB folder structure is taken directly from my iTunes library & is structured by artist\album
 
#23 ·
Berty, do you have this problem with the USB stick, or with the car hard drive? I know Hat doesn't have the in car drive...not sure about MickSmith. I can see albums on the stick, but once downloaded on the car drive, they become one long string of songs, played alphabetically. And any more than one album for an artist lists all those tracks alphabetically. And it doesn't recognise playlists on either the USB stick, or once on the drive, which is a problem as I tend to select music via playlist and not artist/album. Although when I connect my iPhone via cable all is fine. Mini helpfully pointed this out, when I emailed them, but then it negates the point of having the USB or in car drive option, which I pointed out to them, so they are looking into it. They are trying to be helpful...but I am holding off completing my satisfaction survey for the moment (this point, and also feedback on the pooling of water behind the rear window seal, which Hat is also pursuing, but that's a whole other thread!)
 
#28 ·
I found an option to play tracks randomly from my IPod, I just can't remember how I found it......but it is there......somewhere. In the Media Options there is a Random that you can tick.......just don't ask me the steps to find it because I can't remember
 
#29 ·
An update on my broken USB drive.
Dropped off at my dealers yesterday & it's now been fixed.Was simply one side of the socket had become misplaced .There was no need to replace the entire Hard drive which at least saved me the problem of reloading my Music collection.Nevertheless the input socket should have been more robust.I don't know who manufactures the hardware for BMW but it's a tad lightweight.Tested the USB connection & reloaded the USB sticks.I'll review the collection to-day & try to delete duplicated tracks & itemise any missing favourites.I've over 17000 tracks on my IMac so finding just 20Gb is difficult.I also managed to locate tracks using the Voice facility but I can't remember quite how I achieved this.Once again it's a trial & error exercise.Would be great if local members could meet in the flesh to share their knowledge.This Forum is doing a fantastic job for BMW ! Keep up the good work.
 
#33 ·
Ok, so the 'infotainment Trade & Marketing Manager' at Mini UK has now confirmed to my dealer that the Music Collection, which is what Mini call the in-car hard drive, DOES NOT support playlists.
He also suggested that using the Favourites option in the system would give you the same outcome (it wouldn't: you would have a single Favourites folder, rather than the infinite playlists you can have on iTunes) and that this was a universal problem (it isn't; plenty of non Apple companies, like Sonos, seem to manage perfectly well). Slightly worrying, given the job title, but there you go.
So, despite having shelled out for it, I am going to ignore it, and go the same route as Hat: create individual USBs as set playlists, which I will keep in the glove box (well, maybe not in the glove box, as the piano black finish doesn't like to be touched. Possibly in the string net thing that is in the passenger footwell) and I will then fish out and plug in, as the mood/playlist takes me. Like others here, I also have a ton of music, in 50 odd playlists, so Kingston are going to be pleased)
And also use my Music on my iPhone, via Bluetooth, when the inevitable happens i.e. the labels fall off the USB sticks, as they scrum with one another in the string net)
Please do pass the word on to any prospective buyers: if you want to just carry on listening to music the way you currently do, get the enhanced Bluetooth with USB, which comes with the Chili Pack, and use your phone, or sticks as above. Spend £55 on TomTom for your iPhone, and use the £1175 that you will save on not having the Media/Navigation XL for other lovely goodies!
 
#35 ·
To give a contrasting perspective, if you have your existing media library in folders grouped logically by artist and album and you like to listen to albums as a whole, bunging the lot on the USB stick and navigating by folder is a solution I'm perfectly happy with aside from the "fiddliness" of having to make so many selections using the wheel and not being able to use the MFSW controls to change album.

Oli
 
#36 ·
Having spent sometime in a demonstrator today (another story for another thread) but having copied files from a USB stick to the internal hard drive I can confirm that it does support playlists.
One of the albums I copied across had a .m3u file with it. The system imported this and now shows it an available playlist and does play it when selected.
 
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