Recording music onto SD card

[Killer Wolf]

in short, how d'you do it? my new car can used cards, and it turns out you can't play CDs while the SatNav's working, so it looks like this might be a good time to switch formats, not least cos a card holds hods more music that a CD.
most of the stuff on google says just to copy it, but if i do that, won't i just end up w/ all the files in folders, and therefore in a standard alphabetised order and not the play order i would create if, eg, i was using Nero to burn a disc?

[drew]

Depends on your car stereo. Mine will only play alphabetical order mp3s from an SD Card. Not much processing power in the stereo itself.

It displays the track info and the name from the meta tag, but it can't do much with them.

Cheers,

Dre.w

[Zieman]

You could give the sound files a prefix (like 001_myfirstsong.mp3, 002_mysecondsong.mp3 etc.).

[Thargoid]

Or your stereo might have a random play functionality, like it probably does for CDs.

But if you want them in a particular order then the numbering trick mentioned is the way to go.

[maik]

My car's SatNav has an option to transfer the data to SD card so that I can use the CD slot for music. Works quite well for me, check if you can do the same. Saves you the hassle of moving your music to SD cards...

[Capt. Murphy]

If it can read mp3 it can probably read playlist files (.m3u) (my other half's 8 year old car stereo can read both from a data CD and also recognises albums if they are in separate folders - you can skip tracks or folders using the stereo controls). Most media-players will create .m3u files for you.

[DaddyHoggy]

My wife's Media Head Unit for her car - plays tracks in, of all things, reverse Chronological order!!! So having ripped her favourite albums down to MP3 and copied them to an SD card to put in the unit, the unit them plays the last track copied to the card, then the 2nd last...

So my wife hears all her album tracks in an order not intended by the album creators, so has resorted to using the shuffle function!

[Killer Wolf]

ta for the replies. sounds a bit rubbish actually, i thought there'd be more scope in this day and age to be flexible w/ playlists etc.
the car does allow you to d/l satnav instructions to disc but the book says it'll take about an hour :-/

[Selezen]

It works the same way as any MP3 player works. It will find whatever is the most obvious method to order the tracks.

Most car MP3 players can handle folders, so I put all my tracks in folders by album title. Each track is numbered in order (which is generally how media players rip tracks anyway) in that folder. The car MP3 players I've had experience of both played the songs in ascending numerical order.

e.g.
Folder: Megadeth [1989] Rust In Peace
Tracks:
01 Holy Wars...The Punishment Due.mp3
02 Hangar 18.mp3
03 Take No Prisoners.mp3
...

I name multi-artist songs as follows:
01 Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody.mp3
02 Richard Marx - Hazard.mp3
03 Spin Doctors - 2 Princes.mp3
etc

Car MP3 players are, by nature, simple on the options, because let's face it you're driving a car and don't want to be distracted by the thing.

If you upload all your folders at the same time it'll play them in alphabetical order. If you then add and remove stuff it'll append the new stuff to the end of the order list.

If you don't have a folder skip option (my last car had one but my current car doesn't) then you have to skip through the tracks manually.

I don't know if all car MP3 players handle playlists - I know neither of the ones I have experience of could handle them.

The fact that your car doesn't allow CD use when the Satnav is on sucks!

[Killer Wolf]

CHeers Selezen.

the CD thing is pretty sucky, given the the standard of the rest of the car's features. summat to do w/ the Sat Nav being DVD-based apparently. keeps reading stuff off it as you drive. will rarely be an issue, cept for next Fri when i head to Manch to see Fountains of Wayne, so i can keep w/ the CDs i guess, but it just seemed better for playing capacity and not getting scratched when you go over bumps etc.

[Selezen]

i head to Manch to see Fountains of Wayne,

Will Stacey's mum be there?

[Killer Wolf]

i can but hope