USB MUSIC & FOLDERS

[lewis890]

I've been trying to get USB music to work with limited success, and was wondering if there was any definite specs with regards to folders, file types, disk size etc

I have a new HS Trophy, and USB music seems flaky at best.

Using a 32GB stick, I copied all my music folders on to it. The files are MP3s.

The files are first shown in one massive alphabetical list, selecting folders does indeed show a lot of the folders...but not all of them. And these folders are not in alphabetical order.
Album cover artwork is shown, and the mp3s even play!

So, does anyone know why certain folders aren't shown and why folders aren't alphabetical? I've tried adding numbers to the front of folders, but that didn't seem to work.

Wondering if there is a limit to number of folders\files?

Anyone had success with this?

Thanks in advance.

lewis

 

[Kerno]

Very limited success. My folder structure is a standard Windows based so Music\Artist\Album\Songs the car usually lists by artist but takes ages to show. The quick menu on the left I assume is to jump to the first Artist with that initial, I have yet to get this to work at all. The infotainment system leaves a lot to be desired if truth be told, the mp3 player does work in a fashion but it's not great.

 

[lewis890]

Thanks. Sounds similar. I'm testing by adding the folders one at a time, just incase there is a corrupt file. Seems to take a while to list all the folders first time, but seems to add them as time goes on (seems to make its own Database on the USB stick by the looks).
Worked out that it shows album covers ONLY if embedded in the mp3 file. So you need software to embed the artwork (free ones on the net). Will look at tags in the MP3s which might be how it organises stuff.

 

[Mick Hughes]

I hope this might be of help - I agree the system is woefully inadequate but, with much patience, I have finally managed to create a "workable" solution (although I shouldn't have to, MG should have produced a logical, user friendly, interface).

I have a 2025 HS Trophy PHEV.

Initially my usb drive contained 3066 music tracks, stored in the conventional Artist / Album / Tracks folder format.

Whilst the car "read" all 3066 tracks (and could play them), it displayed the "No Tracks" message to the left hand side of the display. After much stubborn persistence I discovered 2930 seemed to be the maximum number of tracks my car would accept before it resorted to the "No Tracks" message - don't know why, just know it did.

So I now had a list of tracks sorted in alphabetical order which, in turn, dictated the sort order for my artists. In my case "Abacab" by Genesis was the first alphabetical track, so Genesis were top of my artists list.

In order to restore my artists list to alphabetical order, I had to "fudge" the mp3 tags as follows:

1) Prefix the "Title" tag for the first track in the "Artists" folder for each individual artist - make sure it is the "Title" tag, not the "Filename", the "Title" tag will normally be simply the track name.

2) Because the MG system reads numbers as characters ("AAD" is read before "AA1", and "AA109" is read before "AA11" for example), I had to use the following format for prefixes:
AAAA1 - AAAA9 for the first track for artists 1-9,
AAA10 - AAA99 for the first track for artists 10-99, and
AA100 - AA999 for the first track for subsequent artists.

3) Finally I had a list of Artists in alphabetical order which, when selected, showed their respective albums and, in turn, their respective tracks, enabling me to find and listen to an individaul artist or album as I wished.

I used a Windows utility called Mp3tag to make the changes - available free online.

Finally, it doesn't actually matter which track in the artist folder you choose to prefix, I simply found it simpler and "cleaner" to use the first one.

The attached images should help to tell the story.

 

[mamena]

Same problem with the limit of tracks. My EHS is February this year and has the R46 software version.

 

[Sparky2]

Having read the whole thread several times, I am none the wiser. The Site Guru does not seem to have an answer either. Either there is a gremlin in the car's system which prevents it from reading more than a few files on a USB stick or MG have set a limit on the number of files it can read. Either way, it needs fixing. We are booked in at our local MG Dealer for a recall and software upgrade on 1 May. Does anyone know if this improves the infotainment (hate that word) functionality on USB?