mikekoz Posted March 10, 2013 Report Share Posted March 10, 2013 I own a 2013 Cmax Hybrid with the Sony audio system and want to know if there is a maximum amount of files or songs that the system will see on a music device, USB Drive, external hard drive, etc. Most of the time I use an iPod Classic 160 GB, and the system will not see all of the albums I have on it. My iPod has 14,418 songs on it with just under 27GB free. I can navigate to an artists folder, and on some, not all albums will be seen by the Ford's audio system. My car is using Sync VersionGen2 - V3.1.3. The system has been very buggy since I have had it and this is the latest thing to go wrong. When I plug the iPod into the car after I add files to it, the cars audio system seems to index the iPod and does not get stuck, as it apparently has done on some other peoples systems. Manually indexing it does not help. I have Googled this problem, but cannot find a direct answer. Any help would be appreciated! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
valkraider Posted March 11, 2013 Report Share Posted March 11, 2013 Are they broken up in folders or are they more flat? I couldn't get it to work with a fairly flat directory structure, but using an export hack I was able to get a much more well split out folder structure which worked much better with MFT. Also there is an update due us any day now which could improve this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikekoz Posted March 11, 2013 Author Report Share Posted March 11, 2013 Are they broken up in folders or are they more flat? I couldn't get it to work with a fairly flat directory structure, but using an export hack I was able to get a much more well split out folder structure which worked much better with MFT. Also there is an update due us any day now which could improve this. They are broken down into folders, but if you look at the file structure just using Windows file explorer, you do not see any artist or song names, just a jumbled mess for song titles. Using a 3rd party utility like Floola, I can see the artist name and song. I just backed up all of the music on my iPod to a 320 GB hard drive and am going to try that again this morning. I hope the update that is coming out has been tested. The Sync system in my Cmax has been flakey since the 2nd week I had the car. For a week or so, it would not recognize any USB device plugged into it. The day after I called Ford and setup an appointment for them to look at it, it started working again! Since then, it has just done this one time. One morning I was going to work and listening to the iPod, and all of a sudden the song I was listening to just started distorting, then quit. I could not get it to work again until I shut the car off and turned it back on. I have had no display a few times, twice had the system restart stating it was doing maintenance, voice commands do not seem to work, but that may be me! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikekoz Posted March 11, 2013 Author Report Share Posted March 11, 2013 Just a quick update. After backing up my iPod onto an external Toshiba 320GB drive, I plugged that into my car this morn. It worked flawlessly on my way to work and was actually a lot more responsive than using the iPod! It saw all my files, and apparently there were over 300 of them not being seen when using the iPod. If this works consistently, I will retire my iPod!! But that is the key word, consistently! ..;). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeB Posted March 11, 2013 Report Share Posted March 11, 2013 Eh, I got my 32G USB drive to work for a week or so, then it crapped out. Went back to the iPod, and it hasn't gone splat yet. I hope your external drive works, but I'm skeptical it'll last. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SBGrad Posted March 11, 2013 Report Share Posted March 11, 2013 Wow, you're way past the 1200 files I have on a thumb drive. Still, external hard drive isn't a bad idea. Drop it into the Bottomless Pit of Storage and you should be set. I take it that this exrternal HD doesn't require power? My Western Digital 500MB drive does have its own power cord, so I probably wouldn't put it in the car on a daily basis. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikekoz Posted March 11, 2013 Author Report Share Posted March 11, 2013 Wow, you're way past the 1200 files I have on a thumb drive. Still, external hard drive isn't a bad idea. Drop it into the Bottomless Pit of Storage and you should be set. I take it that this exrternal HD doesn't require power? My Western Digital 500MB drive does have its own power cord, so I probably wouldn't put it in the car on a daily basis. It is a small portable drive and just requires a USB cable. I got it on a closeout deal at Office Depot last year for $19.99!!! I thought at first it was just a case at that price. Best deal I ever got at OD!! :drool: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikekoz Posted March 12, 2013 Author Report Share Posted March 12, 2013 (edited) Well, my joy was short lived!! It is not having any problems indexing and all of my files are there, but it plays all of them in the wrong order. It plays all songs alphabetically! Even the most basic of MP3 players I have used have not had this problem. Taking this into account, along with the other problems, I do not have too much confidence that this will be fixed by an update. I could spend $30.00 on a generic portable player that would not have the problems my $33,000 one has! :cry: Looks like I have a choice....use my iPod and just play the files it finds, or use it with an external drive and have it play all of my songs out of order. ;(. Edited March 13, 2013 by mikekoz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zhackwyatt Posted March 13, 2013 Report Share Posted March 13, 2013 Well, my joy was short lived!! It is not having any problems indexing and all of my files are there, but it plays all of them in the wrong order. It plays all songs alphabetically! Even the most basic of MP3 players I have used have not had this problem. Taking this into account, along with the other problems, I do not have too much confidence that this will be fixed by an update. I could spend $30.00 on a generic portable player that would not have the problems my $33,000 one has! :cry: Looks like I have a choice....use my iPod and just play the files it finds, or use it with an external drive and have it play all of my songs out of order. :nonono:What order do you want it to play in? You can tell it to shuffle and you can tell it to play a specific album or artist. Also, (i've never done it) but I think you can create a play list and it will play off that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikekoz Posted March 13, 2013 Author Report Share Posted March 13, 2013 What order do you want it to play in? You can tell it to shuffle and you can tell it to play a specific album or artist. Also, (i've never done it) but I think you can create a play list and it will play off that. They should play in the order that they were setup on the artists original album. This may not seem like a big deal to most, but I am just used to listening to them that way. On some albums, it is almost a necessity that they play in the correct order. A good example would be concept albums where one song blends into the other, like Pink Floyd's "The Wall." Another example where you may want to listen to the songs in the correct order would be live albums. One may want to listen to the entire concert in the order that it was originally performed. What I think is happening is that the Sync system is not reading the ID tag information in the mp3 files correctly (or at all!). I have created playlists, but unless there is some piece of software available that will scan my entire external drive and automatically create playlists, that would take way too long! This is a basic thing that MP3 players should do, I have owned various devices that play MP3's, and they all do this. None of them are perfect, and in some cases, the ID tag in the files are not correct and they play in the wrong order anyway. This even happens sometimes when using my iPod. I can correct this by just editing the ID tag on the files. If Sync is not reading this information, this is a major oversight in its design. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikekoz Posted March 13, 2013 Author Report Share Posted March 13, 2013 One more thing I forgot to mention. When you bring up the audio player in the car, and bring up the album you want to play, the songs show up on the display in the correct order. Sync will just not play them in that order. Just for the heck of it, I turned on shuffle play, and no change. It just plays them in a different random order. This morning I also noticed another odd thing about the player. It will show in the upper left corner the track number in relation to the amount of tracks on the album. For example, if your album has 10 tracks, you will see 2 / 10, or 4 / 10. I just noticed that it is not correct on my system. I may be playing track 1 but it will show 5 / 10. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
salprint Posted March 13, 2013 Report Share Posted March 13, 2013 One more thing I forgot to mention. When you bring up the audio player in the car, and bring up the album you want to play, the songs show up on the display in the correct order. Sync will just not play them in that order. Just for the heck of it, I turned on shuffle play, and no change. It just plays them in a different random order. This morning I also noticed another odd thing about the player. It will show in the upper left corner the track number in relation to the amount of tracks on the album. For example, if your album has 10 tracks, you will see 2 / 10, or 4 / 10. I just noticed that it is not correct on my system. I may be playing track 1 but it will show 5 / 10.Don't have that problem...all my albums play in order unless I have it on shuffle. Take a look at your device (Ipod?) and make sure it isn't on shuffle at the source. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikekoz Posted March 13, 2013 Author Report Share Posted March 13, 2013 Don't have that problem...all my albums play in order unless I have it on shuffle. Take a look at your device (Ipod?) and make sure it isn't on shuffle at the source. Sorry, I should have made it more clear. I am having this problem on an external hard drive. I also have an iPod, however, and I never thought any of the settings on it affected the Sync operation in any way. A while back I turned the volume on the iPod up to boost the sound in my car, but it had no affect. Same thing with the equilizer controls. Does the shuffle setting on the iPod control the way the Sync system operates? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikekoz Posted March 15, 2013 Author Report Share Posted March 15, 2013 Once again, I thought I had this fixed. I used Mediamonkey as instructed on another forum to alter the ID tags so the track numbers had 3 digits (001,002,003, etc). This initially worked, but the next day it was back to its old tricks! I believe the only way this will be fixed is by Ford and / or Microsoft. It is a shame that on such a nice vehicle, the Sync system, well....Styncs!! Maybe the soon to be released update will help. It could not make it any worse I guess!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
syncmax Posted October 28, 2015 Report Share Posted October 28, 2015 I am replying to an old thread. I don't know if OP fixed the problems with the way music is played from his/her external drive. But I found out to my horror this behavior (i.e. playing tracks in the alphabetical order and not in track number order) is still there even in 2015 model vehicles and in the latest update of MFT. There is a setting called Gracenote - you need to set this to "OFF". It will then play a selcted album in the right order. But if you use auto play or choose play all then it is up to its old tricks - take all the tracks from all albums, alphabetize them and then play in that order - stupid of ford for not having fixed this basic issue. Smiling Jack 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smiling Jack Posted October 29, 2015 Report Share Posted October 29, 2015 I am replying to an old thread. I don't know if OP fixed the problems with the way music is played from his/her external drive. But I found out to my horror this behavior (i.e. playing tracks in the alphabetical order and not in track number order) is still there even in 2015 model vehicles and in the latest update of MFT. There is a setting called Gracenote - you need to set this to "OFF". It will then play a selcted album in the right order. But if you use auto play or choose play all then it is up to its old tricks - take all the tracks from all albums, alphabetize them and then play in that order - stupid of ford for not having fixed this basic issue. I also found that having auto play off in addition to Gracenotes disabled solved the problem. What exactly is auto play anyway ? What is it supposed to do? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kelleytoons Posted October 29, 2015 Report Share Posted October 29, 2015 Isn't autoplay the feature that starts the playback when the car turns on? It picks up wherever it left off. I have it on all the time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FordIVTteam Posted October 29, 2015 Report Share Posted October 29, 2015 Hi guys! Autoplay allows you to listen to the already processed music during indexing. If you turn it off, the system will index all of the music before it plays any of it. I hope that helps! Rebecca Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smiling Jack Posted October 29, 2015 Report Share Posted October 29, 2015 Hi guys! Autoplay allows you to listen to the already processed music during indexing. If you turn it off, the system will index all of the music before it plays any of it. I hope that helps! Rebecca Thank you ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FordIVTteam Posted October 29, 2015 Report Share Posted October 29, 2015 You're very welcome! :) Rebecca Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
syncmax Posted October 30, 2015 Report Share Posted October 30, 2015 The problem with turning it off is that if you expect the system to play all music in your USB without your intervention, it will not do it. It will play the album you selected and then stops and expects you to select next album. I want it to start somewhere (it can randomly pick an album from a newly inserted usb) and then play all the music in the USB in order (i.e. artist->album->track #) - I do not like the way it alphabetizes titles from all artists/albums.This is the first ever mp3 player I have encountered that has this behavior. I also drive an elantra and it plays music in the right order. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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