MP3 album order and name length

[sparx1981]

Hey guys, it's my first post in here so hoping you can help. I have two questions. I currently have an 8gb memory stick in the USB port in the car and around 80 albums on there. The first problem is how the folders for these albums is displayed in the list. As an example, I have 'Kanye West-Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy' as a folder and inside this all the relevant MP3's. But 'Kanye West-Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy' is too long to display on screen so I might be lucky to see 'Kanye West-Beautiful D'.
Is there anyway to extend the maximum length shown on the screen for folders? It seems like the mp3 file name can scroll which is good enough, but the folder name only shows a cut down number of characters.

The second question is to do with how the folders are organised. It seems like most of the folders are alphabetical but others are out of sequence.... Can any one advise on this?

[djclark25]

Hi sparx.

There isn't a way to scroll the folder name in the folder list I'm afraid. I name my folders with just the album name and leave off the artist on my stick.

The folder list should be alphabetical. Make sure there are no spaces or special characters at the start of the folder name.

Also be aware that the folder list shows the last folder within a folder.

Eg my stick is setup like

Root
....... oasis
......... be here now
.......... Def maybe
....... ocean colour scene
. ........ mosely sholes

In this setup the folder list will show be here now, Def maybe and mosely sholes.It ignores oasis and ocean colour scene.

Hope this helps!!

[Bigfeet]

You are much better to have a short folder tree such as Artist/Album. The reason being is that why the list system works while in the car makes it much easier to navigate.

The folders are listed in Alphabetical order, if you have folders out of place then you will need to check the ID tags you have listed on them, a good tool for that is MP3Tag.

[Heaton]

Cool cheers. I'm still working through my itunes and transferring and so was looking at this.

[Human after all]

I kind of wish that media players and car stereos in general would not use the tags to organise the songs. I would much prefer it if they would just display the file structure as seen on the drive.

I have another couple of issues as well:

1. When I put new songs on the usb stick they seem to appear at the top of the list, regardless of what the names are. I then end up with all the albums I have recently added appearing at the top in 'date modified' (I'm guessing) order.

2. Random play doesn't seem to be very good. I tend to hear the same songs too often. I'm not sure if it's because the stereo is for some reason not shuffling all of the songs on the usb stick (I have over 30gb on it), or if that's just the way random play is on the DS3 stereo.

[djclark25]

I kind of wish that media players and car stereos in general would not use the tags to organise the songs. I would much prefer it if they would just display the file structure as seen on the drive.

I have another couple of issues as well:

1. When I put new songs on the usb stick they seem to appear at the top of the list, regardless of what the names are. I then end up with all the albums I have recently added appearing at the top in 'date modified' (I'm guessing) order.

2. Random play doesn't seem to be very good. I tend to hear the same songs too often. I'm not sure if it's because the stereo is for some reason not shuffling all of the songs on the usb stick (I have over 30gb on it), or if that's just the way random play is on the DS3 stereo.

I found the same thing with the random play. I have a folder with about 130 songs in it and if I put it on random I always seem to be hearing the same 20-30 songs all the time!!